Socio-Economic Impacts of Event Failure: The Case of a Cancelled International Cycling Race

Abstract

The organization of large-scale sporting events implies different benefits and costs for hosting communities. However, little effort has been devoted to studying the impacts of event failures or postponed or cancelled events from the perspective of local residents. This paper is therefore concerned with the range of local residents’ perceived impacts resulting from the cancellation of the 2019 edition of the international men’s cycling race Tour of Croatia. In addition, it also examines if any significant differences exist between local residents familiar with the race and cancelling and local residents not familiar with the race, regarding the perceived impacts of this cancelled event on the hosting community. The number of perceived impacts was reduced by Exploratory Factor Analysis. Differences between local residents familiar with and those not familiar with the race and its cancelation were examined using the two-independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test. The results suggest that local residents not familiar with the event and its cancelation, when compared with local residents familiar with the event and its cancellation, perceive the majority of negative impacts as being weaker and most of the positive impacts as being stronger.