Sports Are Good for Tourism
Beyond its public health aspects, sports contribute to social integration and inclusion, promote education and cultural exchange, and create jobs within the UE. It is because of their cross-national importance that sports have become subject of EU competence with the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. According to article 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the EU supports, coordinates, and integrates the actions of national governments in promoting sports.
Sport is tightly linked to tourism. In fact, a sport can be seen as a specific segment of the tourism industry. In turn, sporting activities and the building of sports infrastructures requires destination management for tourism linked to sport events.
The industry can be observed along two dimensions: from the tourist/consumer's point of view, and from the vantage point of the tourist destination. The latter involves the promotion of the event to provide social and economic benefits to local communities, such as the building of new facilities which will also benefit residents, urban renewal, and projects aimed at environmental sustainability. A successful promotion entails strengthening the cultural identity of the host community, and the sense of belonging of its citizens.
Turin's successful bid for the 2006 Winter Olympics must be considered from this perspective. It was born out of the explicit aim to reposition the city on the global map, by developing services complementary with respect to its traditional industrial activities, and by giving visibility to the city's other side in terms of sports, arts, cuisine. It moved on the trail blazed by Barcelona in developing its waterfront for the 1992 Summer Olympics, by involving citizens in the making of the project.
It goes without saying that the magnitude of the ensuing benefits varies according to the features of the sporting event, such as its duration (from a few hours in the case of Champions League Final, to a whole month in the case of Olympic Games), its budget, media penetration etc. And although the spotlight is on mega-events, one should not overlook the benefits accruing to the destination location also in the case of smaller events.
What matters is the event's level of international recognition, which gives unique prestige and visibility to the hosting locality. Also medium and small towns can aspire to bid for a sport event, as long as they have the proper services and facilities to meet international standards, and warrant high levels of participation. The coherence between the event and locality's development and positioning policies, also in the medium and long term, is crucial to make the event a success in terms of its local and national spillovers.
A successful case in point is the example of Bressanone (Brixen), which has managed to become a point of attraction for high-altitude track and field training. Starting in the 1990s, it organized various international competitions, and in 2009 it hosted the IAAFWorld Youth Championships inAthletics, which attracted 20,000 spectators and more than 2,000 athletes and trainers hailing from 180 nations.
By promoting smart, inclusive, sustainable growth and job creation, sport contributes to the achievement of the objectives set by the Europe 2020 strategy. In this respect, Erasmus+, the Union's program for youth education and training, will make more than €33 million a year available for basic sport activities in the 2014-2020 period, thus funding transnational projects that exchange know-how and promote non-commercial sporting events, so to provide a sounder base for sport policies around Europe.