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While the Olympic Games are always under the spotlight, the Paralympic Games are somehow ignored. This paper aims to invite the general public to think about the para-athletes and the differential treatments they received.

Among the participating countries, many of them were unable to win a single Olympic or Paralympic medal. When the dependent variable is left-censored, ordinary least squares regression is asymptotically biased downwards. In the literature, researchers typically employ the maximum likelihood Tobit model to take care of the censoring problem. However, some researchers argue that the Hurdle model has an advantage over the Tobit model in identifying the determinants of winning Olympic medals. Following their wisdom, this paper employs both the Tobit and Hurdle models in analysis.

The empirical evidence gathered in this paper suggests that population size, host status and average years of schooling are the big three socio-economic determinants when it comes to winning medals at the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games. The findings support the hypothesis that sports talent is randomly distributed and a large country has a higher chance to have talented athletes or para-athletes winning the Olympic medals. The strong host advantage also showed up in the following Paralympics but was not so strong at the next Olympics.

This paper not only examines the relationship between various social, economic and political factors in determining the success of a nation in the Paralympic Games but also attempts to identify possible non-traditional determinants.

This study aims to provide an understanding of the multi-layered managerial and organizational challenges of mega sporting events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, identify key competencies that address the complexities and uncertainties when planning and organizing the Olympic and Paralympic Games and provide a framework to classify sporting events according to their complexity and uncertainty.

This study uses in-depth semi-structured interview with key organizing actor of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016.

Planning and organizing complex and long-term mega sporting events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games require a set of key competencies, including a range of soft skills (collaboration, negotiation, communication), goal-setting, persistence and resilience, paradox thinking and timing.

Presenting the findings in an unedited and raw interview format provides practitioners and scholars alike with unfiltered and rich data that allows to choose, apply and adapt key competencies and heuristics from Rio 2016 to their own mega sporting projects or research agendas; allows to differentiate between sporting events according to their complexity and uncertainty.

This chapter coins the term Development through Mega-Events (DME) in order to propose a next step for developing social legacies in accordance with the principle of social development.

This chapter’s argument for DME is developed using quantitative, indicator-based data from the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) study as well as relevant literature from the sub-fields of Sport for Development and Peace and Sport Mega-Events.

We discuss the absence of a baseline understanding of the properties of sport mega-events. Also absent are progressive efforts to achieve sustainability by means other than competition among prospective bidders. We recommend that hosts tie social legacies to public policy objectives that are concomitant with the properties of the sport mega-events. Retrospectively applied, OGI data from 2010 reveals social inclusion as one potential social legacy that reflects the nature of the Olympics and the policy realm in the host region.

This chapter is original work. It would be of interest to potential host communities, policymakers, and researchers.

Dr Robert Steadward has been the International Paralympic Committee's only president since its inception in 1989. Within the Olympic movement, he is an active IOC member having roles on the 2000 Commission on Reform and Olympic Truce Foundation, and he has also been an integral driving force behind the growth and development of the Paralympic Games. Here he talks with David Legg of Mount Royal College about how the IPC'smarketing capabilities have evolved, the challenges facing the IPC, and current issues facing the IPC's marketing efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to compare motivations of volunteers at two mega multi-sport events.

The research used a quantitative research design to survey volunteers at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (n=2,066) and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (n=11,451) via an online questionnaire based upon the Special Event Volunteer Motivation Scale.

The results indicate that the volunteers, most of whom had previously volunteered, were motivated by similar variables, including the uniqueness of the event, the desire to make it a success and to give back to their community. The results of the principal components analysis indicated that most items of the scale loaded onto similar components across the two research contexts.

There were methodological limitations in terms of the timing of the questionnaire administration and Likert scales used, however, these issues were controlled by gatekeepers. These limitations could have research implication for comparative studies of volunteers at mega events.

Understanding volunteer motivations will enable event managers and volunteer managers to plan for legacy.

Volunteer motivations include wanting to give back to their community and therefore, increases the potential for volunteer legacy.

This is the first research that: enables comparison of winter and summer Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers; has substantial sample sizes in relation to the variables; applies higher item loadings to strengthen the analysis; and involves the use of the same instrument across events.

This study investigates the regulation and restriction of ambush marketing during the London 2012 Olympic Games, with analysis of actions taken via social networks and digital marketing related to the mega sports event. Results show that, where this issue was concerned, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) was the most restrictive OCOG in history. However, there are neither specific legal tools nor international agreements to prohibit ambush marketing and protect official sponsorships. This paper looks at the proliferation of ambush cases during the London 2012 Olympics and underlines the widespread growth of this practice, despite reinforcement of existing laws. Findings show that brands were very imaginative at the expense of official sponsors and that social networks can be powerful publicity channels.

The purpose of this paper is to report on aspects of service quality at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, from a rather unusual perspective, the athletes. To date there has been little evidence captured about athlete’s satisfaction at sporting events, and specifically about their perceptions of the service quality provided.

Unique “full” access to the London 2012 Paralympics allowed to the collection of data directly from the athletes. The study reports the questionnaire findings from a sample of 250 respondents.

From this study an operational assessment and performance framework has been generated composed of ten criteria and 73 items or sub-criteria, which can be used as a benchmarking tool to plane, design and compare future sport mega-event. Moreover, the study evidence based the high quality of the 2012 Paralympics Games, as he athletes rated, on a five point Likert scale, 64 items in the “very satisfied” category, a very positive set of feedback for the Games organisers.

The methodology applied was appropriate, generating data to facilitate discussion and draw specific conclusions from. A perceived limitation is the single case approach; however, this can be enough to add to the body of knowledge where very little evidence has been captured so far and where the objectives were to explore the Paralympics games service quality and performance.

This research provides a tangible evidence base to support future sport event decision makers, planners and designers in this highly complex “arena”. In any system there are always areas for improvement, these are highlighted within the paper for further investigation.

This is the first paper to identify and synthesize aspects of sport mega event service quality from the athletes viewpoint and informs how well designed, organised and managed the London 2012 Games were from a primary user perspective. The paper makes a defined contribution by developing evidence based recommendations for this important yet under researched area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore social capital emerging from the collective set of activities pursued by a network of stakeholders leveraging tourism benefits from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (the Games).

A case study of an Olympic tourism consortium (the Consortium) established to garner tourism benefits from the Games illustrates the forms of social capital development emerging from this initiative. A three‐phased research process involving a literature review, key informant interviews with Consortium stakeholders, and a follow‐up on‐line survey with these representatives informs the study's data collection and analysis process. Aspects of bonding, bridging and linking social capital creation are examined.

Varying levels of confidence, trust, mutual respect, personal ties, shared values, and human capacity were generated through the Consortium's activities. This social capital was perceived as a valuable but fragile legacy capable of nurturing increased leadership and organizational capacity particularly when tackling issues confronting the industry's overall sustained prosperity. They also felt that the value and momentum of the social capital legacy might be imperiled by a limited appreciation of how to effectively activate it in a post‐Games environment.

Insights are provided into the social capital that networks of stakeholders can generate when working collectively to leverage benefits from sport mega‐events such as the Games.

The research contributes to emerging discussions concerning social capital leveraging in tourism related sport mega‐event management settings.