The Sporting Events Industry, The Impact On City Competitiveness

In this globalization and economy transformation age, the flowing of resourcesbetween cities worldwide has been accelerated. As a result, many old industrializedcities nowadays encounter the challenge of resources shortage and developmentbottleneck. How to realize the economy transformation, how to enhance urbancompetence, and how to attract more flowing resources are key issues to many cities.The city of Indianapolis of America adopted sports-based development strategy since1970 and had gained huge success. This case has been noticed and copied by manyother cities. In our opinion, the sports-based industry development strategy has itsmeanings in effectively improving the competences of cities.In this paper, we mainly discussed the mechanism of this kind of influence basedon the theory of industrial economics, sports economics and urban competences. Weadopted the Impact Analysis for PLANing model and used statistical tools such asregression analysis in this dissertation.The mechanism of how sports events industry influences urban competenceconsists of its effects in economy growth, industrial structure and city branding.Sustaining growth of economy is a base and apparent target of urban competence. Theindustrial structure effect of sports events industry describes its association with otherindustries and its influence on industrial structure's optimization and upgrading.The city branding effect is the effect that the development of sports eventsindustry can improve urban functions, to heighten urban image and to attract flowingresources.Aimed at gaining sustainable competitive advantage for the city, a city'sdevelopment of sports events industry begins with the contests. The author argues thata city's demand of events depends on ratio of the total costs to total benefits of theevents, and the optimal point occurs when the total costs equals to the total benefits.In the study, "radar map method" was introduced as method to provide an insight intothe impact of the sports events industry to the development of the city. To measure thecontribution of the sports events on economic growth, industry structure and brandingof the city, 8 measurements were developed; each was evaluated in a 5 point scale.The measurements are: investments in the construction of the sports facilities, touristsattracted by the games, the support and participant of the residents in the city,"software" investments from the places out the country, the attractiveness of thesports events, the industrial structure, and the level of sports event management. The scores of the items, which were given by the experts, were considered as reflections ofthe influence of the sports events' industry. Then, the scores were depicted in a clearformat of "radar map". The empirical study, which applied the framework ofinteraction between the sport games and competitive advantage of a city to theOlympic Games from 1992-2002, indicates that the modem Olympic Games havepositive effect on the growth of the economy and the structure of the industries, whilethe effect on the branding of the city is significant and uncertain. Another empiricalstudy of the correlation of sports car industry and car industry reveals a significantrelationship between them. Based on the first hand data, the author modified theestimation of the economic influence of the fundamental construction of ShanghaiInternational sport car center, Moto Grand Prix China, and F1 Grand Prix China. Theresult shows that the development of the Shanghai sports car industry will leveragethe competitive advantages of the city. Also, from the perspective of industrialconvergence and sports events management, the author proposes some suggestions onupgrade the cities' competitive advantages through the way of developing the sportsevens industry...