Regulatory Informality Across Olympic Event Zones

Abstract

Olympic event zones are characterised as being intensely formally regulated during live staging periods, producing exclusionary environments blamed for side-lining host community interests. Yet, our findings contradict what scholars perceive to be inflexible formal regulations, and, the regulator’s ability to take informal action. By interviewing and drawing on the experience of 17 regulators during London 2012 we identify how regulators simultaneously oscillate between modes of regulatory formality and informality, straddling what is referred to as the ‘formality-informality span’. Our application and theorisation of these concepts critiques existing explanations of how regulation is enacted in mega-sporting events, providing new insights into the way organisers balance regulatory demands and potentially opening up new emancipatory policies and more equitable outcomes for host communities.