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Political dissent threads through the history of the Olympic Games. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) openly prohibits athletes from injecting politics into the Games, Olympians have nevertheless staged protests, using the Olympics to challenge the predominant power structures and institutions. This chapter analyzes outbursts of athlete activism in the context of wider social movements that make these political paroxysms more viable. Social movements scythe political space for athletes, spark athletes' political imaginary, and provide support and cover. From the early days of the Games, Olympic athletes have expressed dissent, as when Irish track-and-field athlete Peter O'Connor rebelled against British colonialism at the 1906 Olympics in Athens. At the Mexico City 1968 Games, Czech gymnast Vera Čáslavská carried out a politically symbolic acts as did US sprinters John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and Wyomia Tyus. At the 1972 Munich Games, US track medalists Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collett protested in nonchalant fashion on the medal stand. At the 1980 Olympics, Polish Olympian Władysław Kozakiewicz issued politically provocative symbology on the pole vault mat that challenged Soviet hegemony. In the twenty-first century, numerous Olympians have made political statements, despite a rule in the Olympic Charter that forbids such activity. In each case, athlete activists were bolstered by vibrant political movements in their home country. In this chapter, I trace the relationship between political Olympians and social movements as well as the wider dialectic of resistance and restriction that encompasses the interplay between dissident Olympians and the IOC.

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between the attributes of Olympic mascots and their impact on sponsorship effectiveness. Based on a multiattribute model and the introduction of engagement theory and the meaning transfer model, this article uses the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics mascot “Bing Dwen Dwen” as the research object to empirically analyze the effects and mechanisms of the mascot's attributes on preference, event engagement, sponsorship enterprise trust and sponsorship enterprise attitude, ultimately constructing a sponsorship effectiveness model.

The survey method was used to examine 238 respondents' emotions and attitudes towards companies participating in sponsoring Olympic mascots.

The study found that the main attributes of the mascot include visual and emotional factors, both of which have a positive impact on preference, with emotional factors having a greater influence than visual factors. Visual and emotional factors indirectly affect engagement through preference. Preference and engagement play a completely mediating role in the effect of mascot attributes on sponsorship enterprise trust and sponsorship enterprise attitude.

This study provides practical recommendations for managers to achieve marketing success in sports sponsorship through mascots.

This paper provides a measurement tool for the study of mascot attributes and important support for subsequent research in sponsorship marketing.

This study aims to integrate and revalidate previously proposed various structural models in understanding residents’ attitudes and behaviors in relation to mega-events before the events.

This study focussed on the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and used a questionnaire-based quantitative survey prior these events. A PLS-SEM analysis was run on a sample of 473 residents, in testing relationships between residents’ trust, perceived impacts, support for hosting and subjective well-being.

Results revalidate propositions from previous research, but suggest key contextual differences in light of biosecurity risks. Residents’ perceived positive (cultural) and negative (environmental) impacts affect their support for mega-events, and their perceived positive (economic and cultural) and negative (social) impacts affect their subjective well-being. Variances in the relationships were found for those who perceive a high biosecurity risk.

The data were collected from one mega-event, and thus the findings of this study are highly contextualized.

This research suggest that mega-event organizers should put effort into promoting the benefits of hosting mega-events and work collaboratively with stakeholders to reduce potential negative costs and risks as well as increase resident well-being via bringing in economic and cultural benefits.

This research focusses on social well-being during and post COVID in relation to the hosting of a mega-event.

The data were collected from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, a mega-event that, because of COVID-19 and restricted spectator flows, potentially had characteristics quite different from that of other Winter Olympics or sporting mega-events.

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.

Despite the advances in theory and practice about player behaviour in esports gaming literature, there is a lack of understanding as to whether esports are compatible with the values of Olympism and if they should be considered for future Games editions. The current study advances this line of research by examining esports player experiences, their effects on perceiving Olympic values, and the support towards the Olympics in order to verify if differences occur according to the cross-cultural environment.

Using a sample of 671 esports amateur gamers from three countries (Portugal, Brazil and Japan), structural equation models and a multigroup analysis were performed to analyse the differences in the hypothesized paths existing between the groups.

Results reveal that player in-game emotional experiences positively influence Olympic values perception across countries. The excellence and friendship values showed a positive effect on support intentions to the Games towards Portuguese and Brazilian players, while the respect value was the strongest predictor towards behavioural intentions in Japan. Cultural backgrounds and game genre in each country can explain player attitude towards the Olympic values shared on the online environment.

This study is able to provide a better understanding of how the Olympic values serve as a gratification in different cross-cultural environments according to the theory of uses and gratifications (U&G) and the theory of cultural dimensions. Complementarily, these findings can be used as valuable information for esports publishers and developers attempting to spread the Olympic values in the esports industry.

In 2020, Sports Illustrated proclaimed its “Sportsperson of the Year” as something dubbed “the activist athlete,” choosing five athletes – LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif – that represented the term. Like so many athletes who came before them, these athletes vividly demonstrate the potential of sport to shine a spotlight on critical issues in society, yet again solidifying how sport does not exist merely as some kind of escape, but is a major stakeholder in global campaigns for social justice.

This chapter historicizes the contemporary resurgence of athlete activism, largely connected to the reawakening of Black Lives Matters (BLM) in 2020, within what journalist Howard Bryant has called The Heritage, with athletes who acknowledge and accept the charge to use their spotlights for those who have none. From the turning point of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which saw collective movements of African-American athletes culminate in the powerful Black power protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a protest that built upon the legacies of so many, to the ongoing debates that surround the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Rule 50, athletes have long understood how sport serves not only as an integral part of society but also as an agent for change. Contemporary cries for athletes to “shut up and dribble” echo past claims that sport takes place on a level playing field that transcends politics. The history of sports demonstrates otherwise, as athletes embody every imaginable, intersectional, classification of political actor.

Activism in the sport world is often connected to iconic images like the raised fists of John Carlos and Tommie Smith in a Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics or the figure of Cathy Freeman, wrapped in the Aboriginal flag, taking her victory lap at the 1994 Commonwealth Games and the 2020 Sydney Olympics. Activism, be it individual or through collective action, is a contemporary reality in sport. These actions reverberate out, sometimes joining with or magnifying other significant social and political currents to create waves that shift society. They may take the form of supporting mental health conversations, developing sporting infrastructure and support to expand opportunities for the next generation, concerted efforts at changing governance representation, or challenging sexist policy in sports, for example. This chapter draws from a talanoa on activism in Pacific sport, bringing these various activities together in order to surface the activism taking place, and better understand and reframe how we think about sport activism in Pacific communities. On the one hand, we recognize that particular cultural values like humility, respect, and orientations to servant leadership naturally encourage activism in the form of everyday advocacy and grassroots interventions. On the other, we discuss whether these values also prevent more outspoken and disruptive forms of activism which are often required to challenge systems of injustice and enact structural change. In this preliminary look at Pacific activism in sport, we surface some insights and raise questions for future research.

This conversation presents the reflections from six international disaster scholars on how disaster capitalism manifested in very different ways in different countries, including Japan, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, India and South Africa, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the September 15, 2020.

The prominent themes in this conversation include profiteering, oppression and the politics of disasters.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions around disaster capitalism and disaster risk creation.

This chapter honors the opportunity I have had to learn with David Maines over the past 35 years. I connect my research on communication and disability, specifically among individuals who are blind and visually impaired, to Maines' discussion of narratives incorporating Rawlins' exploration of similarity and difference. I discuss narratives of disability as difference using three examples: A short story written by H. G. Wells; the American with Disabilities Act; and interviews conducted with elite blind goalball athletes. I conclude with 10 lessons learned about disability and difference including that the goal of my research is to help us all perceive disability as a difference that matters, but not as a difference that disables.