Social policy for sport events : leveraging (relationships with) teams from other nations for community benefit

Recent work on sport events has argued that host governments should do more to leverage events in order to obtain and spread the benefits. This study uses ethnographic methods to compare two cities' implementation of a programme designed to leverage the presence of visiting teams training for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Whereas one city formulated and implemented a detailed strategic plan to obtain benefits from its relationship with its adopted visiting team (Papua New Guinea), the other made no effort to benefit from adopting a visiting team (Wales). The city that leveraged its visiting team obtained new relationships, cultural insights, and improved organisational networks, whereas the city that did not leverage obtained no comparable benefits. The difference was due to the disparity in strategic vision by the two city governments and the vague mandate of the state programme which had caused each city to adopt its chosen team. Future work should explore factors that foster and that inhibit effective leverage before and during sport events.