Early community recommendations for sustainable mega-events: evidence from the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games

Abstract

Recommendations are a high form of community consultation, but rarely solicited in surveys of resident attitudes despite their potential to better inform planning and foster stronger event loyalty in an era of mega-event crisis. This paper innovates by identifying and structuring open-ended recommendations for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games from host region residents 10 years prior to that mega-event. From an online survey of 897 respondents, 946 discrete recommendations for event “success” were organised through thematic analysis into high level “event,” “community” and “organiser” themes. In the emergent community vision for the Games derived from these themes, host city residents aspire for efficient, affordable, and authentic Games that benefit and involve the host community and learn from the past. The vision’s focus on resident self-interest is unsurprising but challenges event organisers to accommodate the interests of multiple stakeholders. The aspiration for a sustainable community, nevertheless, is conducive to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and complements recent IOC reforms and the official 2032 Games Vision which call for greater responsiveness to host community interests. Under a framework of soft transformative governance, facilitating micro-transformations should ensure that marginalised groups are heard and their aspirations integrated into early mega-event planning.