Exploring an Olympic “Legacy”: Sport Participation in Canada before and after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics THOMAS PERKS University of Lethbridge
Guided by the notion of a trickle-down effect, the present study examines whether sport participation in Canada increased following the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Comparing rates of sport participation prior to and following the Games using nationally representative data, the results suggest that the Olympics had almost no impact on sport participation in Canada, although there does appear to be a modest “bounce” in sport participation in the Vancouver area immediately following the Vancouver Games. As such, if the trickle-down effect did occur, the analysis suggests that the effect was locally situated, short-lived, and small. Inspir´ee par la notion de l’effet de retomb´ee, la pr´esente e´ tude examine si la participation sportive au Canada a augment´e a` la suite des Jeux olympiques d’hiver de 2010 a` Vancouver. Les r´esultats de la comparaison des taux de participation au sport avant et apr`es les Jeux utilisant des donn´ees repr´esentatives au niveau national, sugg`erent que les Jeux olympiques ont eu pratiquement aucun impact sur la participation sportive au Canada, mˆeme s’il semble y avoir un faible “rebond” dans la participation au sport dans la r´egion de Vancouver imm´ediatement apr`es les Jeux. Cela e´ tant, si l’effet de retomb´ee s’est produit, l’analyse sugg`ere qu’il a e´ t´e modeste et de courte dur´ee et on l’a ressenti seulement localement.
The analysis for this paper was conducted at University of Lethbridge RDC that is part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). The services and activities provided by the CRDCN are made possible by the financial or in-kind support of the SSHRC, the CIHR, the CFI, Statistics Canada, and participating universities whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the CRDCN’s or that of its partners’. In addition, thank you to the anonymous reviewers of the CRS for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Suzana Burlea for her work on the French translation of the abstract. Thomas Perks, Department of Sociology, University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Dr., Lethbridge, AB, T1K 3M4, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
C 2015 Canadian Sociological Association/La Soci´ et´e canadienne de sociologie
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IN AN ERA WHEN a significant proportion of the costs associated with hosting an Olympic Games are paid for with public funds, proponents of the Olympic Movement have increasingly emphasized the long-term economic and social benefits, or legacies, that are incurred by cities and countries hosting the Games. According to Donnelly (2011), this growing emphasis on legacies is not surprising, especially given that neoliberalism, and its general attack on government spending, has increasingly become the dominant political ideology in North America and elsewhere. No doubt aware of this changing economic climate and, in turn, the need to better manage the information on the potential positive economic and social impacts of the Games, in 2003 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) initiated a program, now known as the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) program, for tracking the Games’ legacies. The primary goal of this program, which consists of four reports prepared by Games’ organizing committees spanning a 10-year period before and after the Games, is to enable the IOC to measure, analyze, and promote the impact of the Olympics on a given host city, region, and country based on 126 environmental, socio cultural, and economic indicators (VANOC 2007). After all, how can the IOC and supporters of the Olympic Movement justify the enormous and expanding public spending required to host an Olympic Games at a time when other social and community services, both locally and nationally, are at risk of being cut? The answer, it seems, is the promise of legacies. One of these potential legacies—the promise of increases to sport participation among the general public—is the focus of this study. Over the years numerous stakeholders, such as the IOC, politicians, athletes, and others who stand to gain from funding for elite sport, have propagated the belief that one of the benefits from hosting an Olympic Games for a host city or country is increases to grassroots sport participation (Donnelly 2010). These contemporary claims have historical precedent, as it is well known among Olympic historians that Pierre de Coubertin, considered the founder of the modern Olympic Games, was quite explicit that one of his central reasons for creating the Olympic Movement was to stimulate mass sport participation, and a sport “ethic” (Toohey and Veal 2007). As such, the promise of a sport participation legacy is one of the few legacies ideologically grounded in the fundamentals of Olympism, both as a founding and ongoing objective of the Olympic Movement. In more recent writings on the sport participation legacy, one of the theories put forward in support of the argument that the Olympics act as a catalyst to expand sport participation is the notion of a trickle-down effect; that is, the “process by which mass sports participation is stimulated by public exposure to elite sport” (Frawley et al. 2009:3). Of course, if the trickle-down effect is legitimate then increases to populationlevel rates of sport participation in a host city or country following an Olympic Games compared to rates prior to the Games should be evident. And yet, while a number of studies have critically examined the “legacies”
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concept generally (Leopkey and Parent 2012; Mangan and Dyreson 2010), and the concept of a “sport participation legacy” specifically (Coalter 2004; Green 2012; Wellings et al. 2011), there have been relatively few studies that have empirically examined levels of sport participation prior to and following an Olympic Games to determine what role these kinds of events may have as contributors to expanding rates of sport involvement. Despite anecdotal claims to the contrary, researchers who have examined the impact of the Olympic Games on sport involvement have, for the most part, been unable to find support for the trickle-down theory. For example, based on a review of the literature examining the consequences of hosting an Olympic Games, Weed, Coren, and Fiore (2009) concluded that, of the small number of empirical studies that have been done, none offer any evidence that an Olympic Games has raised sport participation levels within a host population, although they also note that evidence of “better quality” is required. Murphy and Bauman (2007), too, found scant evidence of any impact on individual participation at the population level as a result of hosting a mass sporting event like the Olympic Games, and also that few quality evaluations that speak to this possibility have been conducted (for a systematic review that came to similar conclusions, see also Mahtani et al. 2013). In a more recent article (Bauman, Murphy, and Matsudo 2013), these same authors noted that only one study (Bauman, Ford, and Armstrong 2001) offers some evidence showing what is, at best, a marginal increase to population physical activity levels following the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. However, Veal, Toohey, and Frawley (2012:155) do counter this claim by arguing that any suggestion of increases to sport participation in Australia is “extremely speculative” due to the inadequate and inconsistent collection of data following these Games. Donnelly (2010:86) goes even further and suggests that any claims of a trickle-down effect following an Olympic Games are a “convenient fiction” and that inspiration alone is simply not enough to expand grassroots participation in sport. Set against these claims, the present study is instructive because it provides some evidence for a trickle-down effect following the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada (hereafter referred to as the “Vancouver Games”). This evidence is based on comparisons between levels of sport participation prior to and following the Vancouver Games utilizing nationally representative Canadian data. Importantly, the Vancouver Games are an ideal case study to investigate the trickle-down effect for a number of reasons. First, the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) was among the first host organizations to fall under the new OGI reporting obligations required by the IOC. Second, the goal of increasing sport participation was a part of VANOC’s initial Olympic bid (Donnelly 2012) and featured as part of its “Legacies Now” program. Third, the Vancouver Games have generally been perceived as one of the most successful Games ever for Canadian athletes, having broken the record for the most
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gold medals (14) won by a host nation at a single Winter Olympics (the previous record was 13 gold medals, set by the Soviet Union in 1976 and matched by Norway in 2002). As such, if the trickle-down effect is a legitimate claim, it would make theoretical sense for successful performances by athletes from one’s own country to be a particularly powerful motivator for local citizens to become more active in sport. And fourth, Statistics Canada has collected, in one of its ongoing General Social Surveys, just the type of information required to explore this issue as recommended by both Murphy and Bauman (2007:197) and Weed et al (2009:11). That is, representative population-level information on sport involvement collected in the host city and region (along with comparison communities) prior to and following the Olympic Games.
METHODS The data for the analysis came from the microdata files of the 2005 and 2010 General Social Surveys on Time-Use, conducted by Statistics Canada and accessed through the University of Lethbridge Research Data Centre. In these telephone surveys, representative samples of Canadians age 15 and over were asked to complete a time-use diary detailing their activities over the previous 24 hours by noting their main activity in each 15-minute time period during the day. Although the diaries cover all types of activities, this study focuses on the percentage of respondents detailing involvement in a sport activity, based on a list that included participation in football, field hockey, baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, hockey, basketball, tennis, squash, racquetball, golf, swimming, ice skating, downhill skiing, snowboarding, other skiing, curling, bowling, judo, boxing, wrestling, fencing, rowing, canoeing, kayaking, wind surfing, and “other sports.” Because of the numerous historical and contemporary references in the Olympic literature to sport participation specifically, other forms of physical activity, such as walking, jogging, or hiking, and exercise class or aerobics, home exercises, weight-training, or yoga, were excluded from the analysis. Unfortunately, while a reasonable theoretical argument could be made that there may be more pronounced increases in some sports compared to others (e.g. winter vs. summer sports or Olympic vs. non-Olympic sports), when the measure of sport involvement was broken down by individual sports, or groups of sports, the Ns became too small for meaningful analysis. Therefore, only the more omnibus measure of sport participation that included all sports was used as an outcome in the analysis. This issue of small Ns was also true for attempts at other, more nuanced analyses, such as examining interaction effects for sport participants (i.e., people who never or rarely participate in sport vs. those who regularly participate) and age groups (i.e., younger vs. older Canadians). Since the collection of data was spread out evenly across each survey year and covered a 24-hour period, the percentages presented in the
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tables can be seen as representing the number of Canadians involved in sport on a typical or “average” day. In total, there were 19,597 and 15,390 respondents, in 2005 and 2010, respectively, and samples were adjusted by person weights to ensure percentage estimates were consistent with population counts of Canadians. With the trickle-down theory in mind, the primary research question asked was: Is the percentage of Canadians involved in sport higher in 2010 following the Vancouver Winter Olympics than in 2005? To address this question, one-tailed Z-tests for increases between 2005 and 2010 rates of sport participation at the national, provincial, and municipal (coded based on Census Metropolitan Area groupings) levels were conducted, with comparisons made for varying periods of time (i.e., in the 10 months following the Games and bimonthly).1
RESULTS The percentages presented in Table 1 represent the percentage of Canadians participating in sport on an “average” day from March to December 2010, or the months after the Vancouver Games (which ended February 28, 2010), compared to the same months in 2005. The table also presents percentages for Ontario, Qu´ebec, and British Columbia, and for Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, to allow for some provincial and municipal comparisons. Overall, the patterns of findings in Table 1 provide little support for the trickle-down theory. More specifically, nationally, a pattern of decline in sport participation between 2005 and 2010 (from 6.1 to 5.2 percent) was found, which is consistent with findings of an ongoing decline in sport participation in Canada over this time period reported elsewhere (Canadian Heritage 2013). The table also shows that this pattern of decline was generally consistent at the provincial level as well, as neither Ontario (from 6.2 to 5.3 percent), Qu´ebec (from 6.6 to 5.1 percent), nor even British Columbia (from 5.8 to 5.0 percent), where one might expect the trickledown effect to be strongest, showed statistically significant increases to overall rates of sport participation in the 10-month period following the Vancouver Games. Although the results for the other provinces in Canada are not presented, additional analyses revealed that the pattern of either
1.
Given that they have no influence on the percentage estimates, nor do they change the Z-tests that are based on these estimates, bootstrap weights were not used in the analysis. Of course, bootstrap weights do impact the confidence intervals of the percentage estimates (which are reported in the tables) due to their effect on the size of the estimated standard errors. However, when analyses without and with the bootstrap weights were compared, the effect of the bootstrap weighting on the standard errors, as well as the subsequent sizes of the confidence intervals, was extremely modest, and did not change the patterns of findings in any way. For these reasons, the bootstrap weights were not used in the calculation of the confidence intervals. Instead, the confidence intervals reported in the tables are based on the less computationally demanding and parsimonious approach; that is, they are calculated based on the equation P ± 1.96 P(1 − P)/N . This equation is, after all, the basis for the estimated standard error of the difference in percentages used in the calculation of the Z-statistic, so it aligns well with the Z-test itself.
Exploring an Olympic “Legacy”
467 Table 1
No Significant Increases in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in Sport on an “Average” Day in the 10 Months Following the Vancouver Games over 2005 Levels, by Geographic Area 2005 Geographic area
Canada Select provinces Ontario Qu´ebec British Columbia Select cities Toronto Montreal Vancouver a b
2010
Na
Percentb
N
Percent
Zc
15,671
6.1(5.7–6.5)
12,841
5.2(4.8–5.6)
–3.26
6,078 3,721 2,162
6.2(5.6–6.8) 6.6(5.8–7.4) 5.8(4.8–6.8)
4,981 3,002 1,763
5.3(4.7–5.9) 5.1(4.3–5.9) 5.0(4.0–6.0)
–2.02 –2.59 –1.10
2,550 1,750 1,150
4.9(4.1–5.7) 6.3(5.2–7.4) 4.7(3.5–5.9)
2,150 1,450 950
5.2(4.3–6.1) 4.0(3.0–5.0) 4.6(3.3–5.9)
0.47 –2.90 –0.11
Subprovincial Ns were rounded to base 50 to meet Statistics Canada’s microdata disclosure requirements. 95 percent confidence intervals are reported in parentheses, and are calculated based on the equation
. P ± 1.96 P(1−P) N c The Z-values presented in Tables 1 and 2 represent the test statistic for the difference between 2005 and 2010 percentage estimates. Z-values greater than +1.65 indicate statistically significant increases across survey years at the 95 percent level of confidence (one-tailed). As recommended by Bruning and Kintz (1977:222), the Z-values are calculated using the following equation:
P −P
1 p(1−p) N 1
+
2 p(1−p) N 2
, where p =
N P +N P 1 1
2 2
N +N 1
.
2
stability or, more typically, a modest decline in participation was consistent across every province. This pattern of relative stability or decline, too, existed at the municipal level. Here, the results show that Toronto (from 4.9 to 5.2 percent), Montreal (from 6.3 to 4.0 percent), and again where one might expect the effect to be strongest, even Vancouver (from 4.7 to 4.6 percent) do not show any statistically significant increases in sport participation over 2005 levels. It should be noted that, in addition to the three cities highlighted in Table 1, further analyses (not shown) were done on all cities in Canada with a population greater than 750,000 (which was necessary to ensure Ns were reasonably large), which included Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary, Edmonton, and Qu´ebec City. None of these cities, based on an identical analysis as was done on Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, showed statistically significant increases to rates of sport participation between 2005 and 2010. In Table 2, the same analysis was conducted as in Table 1, only now the results are broken down bimonthly (monthly comparisons could not be made as some cell sizes did not meet Statistic Canada’s disclosure requirements). Bimonthly rates of participation allowed for the examination of whether more temporary increases in sport participation took place in 2010 that may have been masked when only average rates of participation
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CRS/RCS, 52.4 2015 Table 2
With the Exception of Vancouver in March/April (in Bold), no Significant Increases in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in Sport on an “Average” Day in the 10 Months Following the Vancouver Games over 2005 Levels, by Geographic Area and Bimonthly Geographic area Canada
Select provinces Ontario
Qu´ebec
British Columbia
Select cities Toronto
Montreal
Vancouver
a
2005 Percentb
2010 Percent
Months
Na,c
Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec
3,126 3,454 4,045 3,336 1,710
5.2(4.4–6.0) 6.1(5.3–6.9) 8.7(7.8–9.6) 4.8(4.1–5.5) 4.2(3.2–5.2)
2,555 2,563 2,567 2,575 2,581
4.7(3.9–5.5) 5.4(4.5–6.3) 7.6(6.6–8.6) 4.1(3.3–4.9) 4.1(3.3–4.9)
–0.86 –1.15 –1.58 –1.29 –0.16
Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec
1,233 1,288 1,571 1,290 696 697 914 937 891 284 430 447 591 408 286
4.7(3.5–5.9) 5.8(4.5–7.1) 9.2(7.8–10.6) 5.3(4.1–6.5) 4.6(3.0–6.2) 5.3(3.6–7.0) 6.4(4.8–8.0) 10.7(8.7–12.7) 4.4(3.1–5.7) 4.3(1.9–6.7) 4.9(2.9–6.9) 7.5(5.1–9.9) 7.1(5.0–9.2) 4.6(2.6–6.6) 3.5(1.4–5.6)
991 993 996 999 1,001 598 600 600 602 603 350 352 352 354 355
3.7(2.5–4.9) 6.3(4.8–7.8) 9.8(8.0–11.6) 2.6(1.6–3.6) 4.2(3.0–5.4) 5.6(3.8–7.4) 5.5(3.7–7.3) 6.3(4.4–8.2) 4.9(3.2–6.6) 3.4(2.0–4.8) 6.1(3.6–8.6) 3.2(1.4–5.0) 6.0(3.5–8.5) 6.0(3.5–8.5) 4.0(2.0–6.0)
–1.16 0.50 0.51 –3.22 –0.40 0.24 –0.72 –2.94 0.45 –0.66 0.74 –2.62 –0.65 0.86 0.33
Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct
550 550 650 500 300 450 400 450 250 200 350 200
4.0(2.4–5.6) 4.7(2.9–6.5) 6.4(4.5–8.3) 4.0(2.3–5.7) 2.8(0.9–4.7) 6.4(4.1–8.7) 9.4(6.5–12.3) 5.9(3.7–8.1) 4.1(1.6–6.6) 2.4(0.3–4.5) 6.5(3.9–9.1) 5.8(2.6–9.0)
450 400 400 450 250 300 250 300 200 200 200 200
3.0(1.4–4.6) 6.8(4.3–9.3) 9.1(6.3–11.9) 1.9(0.6–3.2) 2.4(0.5–4.3) 3.3(1.3–5.3) 6.9(3.8–10.0) 5.0(2.5–7.5) 8.8(4.9–12.7) 2.1(0.1–4.1) 4.8(1.8–7.8) 3.7(1.1–6.3)
–0.85 1.39 1.62 –1.89 –0.29 –1.88 –1.12 –0.53 2.06* –0.20 –0.82 –0.99
N
Z
Subprovincial Ns were rounded to base 50 to meet Statistics Canada’s microdata disclosure requirements. 95 percent confidence intervals are reported in parentheses. c The percentage of sport participants at the municipal level for some of the Nov/Dec bimonthly time periods did not meet Statistic Canada’s disclosure requirements and, therefore, could not be reported. For consistency, none of the Nov/Dec percentages at the municipal level are reported. Notably, none of the Nov/Dec bimonthly percentages in any city showed a statistically significant increase in sport participation between 2005 and 2010. * p ࣘ .05 (one-tailed). b
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over a 10-month period are considered. As Table 2 shows, both nationally and provincially, there were no statistically significant increases in participation in any two-month period following the Games. This was also true for all of the remaining provinces not presented in Table 2. For the most part this was true at the municipal level as well. Here again both Toronto and Montreal show no statistically significant increases in sport participation in any of the bimonthly time periods following the Games. Vancouver, as well, shows no bimonthly increase apart from one exception. Unlike Toronto and Montreal, and unlike any of the remaining months of the year, in Vancouver, when compared to the same time period in 2005, there was a statistically significant increase in sport participation in the two months (March/April) immediately following the Vancouver Games.2 Importantly, this finding was unique to Vancouver. In other words, it did not occur in Toronto or Montreal, nor did it occur in any other bimonthly time period in any other municipality in Canada with a population over 750,000 that were also examined.3 As a supplement to Tables 1 and 2, Figures 1 and 2 depict these same percentages, only now the differences in the percentages between 2005 and 2010, by both geographic area and time period, are presented. The figures are useful because they provide the reader with a visual representation of the differences across survey years, with Figure 1 summarizing the changes nationally and provincially, and Figure 2 summarizing the changes at the municipal level, to get a sense of both the degree of increase/decrease in sport participation within particular geographic areas and time periods, as well as the comparative differences between them. Here, we see that in both figures declines in sport participation were more common than increases, as well as, in Figure 2, that the increase in sport participation in Vancouver immediately following the Games, while statistically significant, was not particularly substantive, and returned to levels of decline relative to 2005 in subsequent months. 2.
Theoretically, it makes sense for rates of sport participation to correlate positively with the arrival of warmer weather in the spring, which also happens to be during the months immediately following the Vancouver Games. However, comparing the rates of sport participation in 2010, following the Games, with those in 2005 speaks against this interpretation, since if the Vancouver effect is a spring or seasonal effect then one would not expect to see the “bounce” in 2010 relative to the corresponding spring months in 2005.
3.
An examination of the changing demographic characteristics of Canadians between 2005 and 2010, such as age and immigration status, while maintaining adequate sample sizes for meaningful analyses, was not possible with the General Social Surveys data due to the relatively small Ns, particularly at the municipal level of analysis. As such, the role that changes to these (and other) demographic characteristics may have had to the changing rates of sport participation between 2005 and 2010 could not be examined. I would speculate, however, that demographic changes have little theoretical relevance to the finding that the Olympics appear to have had little impact on sport participation levels in Canada. While it is true that these characteristics are likely relevant to a discussion of sport participation trends in Canada more broadly, and in particular for understanding what appear to be ongoing declines in sport participation in Canada over time (which, at the national level of analysis, is evident between 2005 and 2010), discussing these characteristics in the context of the present paper takes the paper away from its central purpose, which is to test for an “Olympic” effect.
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CRS/RCS, 52.4 2015 Figure 1
No Significant Increases Nationally or Provincially in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in a Sport Activity on an “Average” Day between 2005 and 2010, by Time Perioda 5 4
Differences in percentages (%)b
3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug Québec
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
Ontario
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug Canada
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
-5
BC
Time period by nation and provinces
a
The black bars represent the estimated differences in “average” sport participation from March to December, and the gray bars represent these same estimated differences broken down bimonthly. b Negative percentages indicate a decline in sport participation between 2005 and 2010.
DISCUSSION Based on the present analysis, it appears that the Vancouver Games had very little impact on levels of sport participation in Canada. This is perhaps most clearly seen in Table 2, where there is almost no evidence of any significant bimonthly increases in sport participation in the 10 months following the Games in any of the national, provincial, or municipal levels of analysis. At the same time, the analysis does indicate an increase in sport participation that is specific to Vancouver in the two months immediately following the Games. Importantly, this “bounce” in participation is exactly what one would expect if the theoretical claim that elite sport “trickles down” and inspires others to take up sport were true, at least on a local level. Although the connection is by no means definitive, when this increase in sport participation in Vancouver is juxtaposed with it not occurring in any other major city in Canada, combined with the fact that the Games took place in Vancouver in the immediately preceding month, then this
Exploring an Olympic “Legacy”
471 Figure 2
With the Exception of Vancouver in March/April, no Significant Increases at the Municipal Level in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in a Sport Activity on an “Average” Day between 2005 and 2010, by Time Perioda 5
*
4
Differences in percentages (%)b
3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4
Toronto
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
May/Jun
Mar/Apr
Mar/Dec
Jul/Aug
Montreal
Sept/Oct
May/Jun
Mar/Apr
Mar/Dec
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
May/Jun
Mar/Apr
Mar/Dec
-5
Vancouver
Time period by municipalities
a
The black bars represent the estimated differences in “average” sport participation from March to December, and the gray bars represent these same estimated differences broken down bimonthly. b Negative percentages indicate a decline in sport participation between 2005 and 2010. * pࣘ .05 (one-tailed)
suggests that this increase in sport participation in Vancouver can, at least theoretically, be tied to hosting the Games themselves. There are, however, important qualifications to this latter conclusion that must be highlighted. First, if the increase in sport participation in Vancouver can indeed be attributed to the trickle-down effect, then the effect was clearly a local one. As has already been noted, with the exception of Vancouver, it did not occur, at least based on the present analysis, anywhere else in Canada, regardless of whether national, provincial, or local rates were examined. Second, the effect was also short-lived. In other words, in the months following the Olympic Games in 2010, there is only evidence of an increase in sport participation in March and April, which were the two months immediately following the Games. Beyond these two months, rates of sport participation in Vancouver fell back to what might be considered “normal” levels, at least when compared with 2005. And
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third, the effect, while statistically significant, appears to be small. Specifically, the findings suggest a 4.7 percent increase in sport participation in Vancouver in the two months immediately following the Games, from 4.1 percent of respondents in 2005 reporting some sport activity in March and April to 8.8 percent in 2010. Overall, while collectively these findings establish some evidence of a trickle-down effect, the positive contribution of hosting the Olympic Games to levels of sport participation, at least following the Vancouver Games, appears to be locally situated, short-lived, and small. Although the patterns of results do suggest a causal connection, it must be emphasized that any claim of a causal link between the Vancouver Games and subsequent levels of sport participation in Vancouver can only be speculative. After all, the increase in sport participation in Vancouver could have been the result of any number of other factors. For example, unusually mild weather in 2010 in Vancouver compared to 2005 could account for the significant difference in sport participation between survey years. As such, there is simply no way of confirming, at least based on the present data, that sport participation in Vancouver increased because of the Vancouver Games and the trickle-down effect. At the same time, the finding that sport participation increased in Vancouver and not elsewhere, and in the two months immediately following the Games, is at least curious, and lends support to the claim of a causal link. From a policy perspective, if this increase in participation is indeed a consequence of hosting the Olympic Games, than an important challenge for proponents of the Olympic Movement, as well as for researchers interested in what factors lead to a more active citizenry, is to determine how to better enhance this immediate effect and then develop the necessary strategies and actions to sustain or even build upon it over the longer term. Given the present findings, a question worth asking is whether the investment of public money into the Vancouver Games was worth it, at least with respect to increases in sport participation. The paper began by highlighting the formal recognition in the early 2000s of the importance of measuring and promoting the positive legacies that stem from the Games, and how these legacies help justify the significant public costs associated with them. It is also worth noting that in advance of the Vancouver Games, VANOC made increases to sport participation an explicit component of its bid and listed “increased participation in sports” as one of the anticipated outcomes from hosting the Games. Of course, the consequences of increasing sport activity from a population health perspective, such as a more active and healthy citizenry, are clear, and do help justify, to some extent at least, the enormous costs to taxpayers associated with hosting an Olympic Games. However, while a more active citizenry and, by extension, the improved health of citizens is an important policy goal, the results of this study suggest that the spin-off of increases to mass sport participation as a result of hosting the Vancouver Games does not justify the
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significant public investment in them. It was not, based on the present findings, money well spent. While there may be other potential benefits to hosting an Olympic Games for host cities and countries, increases to sport participation, at least for the Vancouver Games, does not appear to be one of them. As a concluding point, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that the present study covers a relatively short period of time (i.e., 10 months) following the Vancouver Games, so the question of what the “longer term” impact of the Games might be remains. Here, it is worth noting that the IOC historically has not distinguished between the short- and long-term effects of hosting the Games, but the underlying message is that the trickledown effect is a long-term phenomenon. As such, it may be the case that the time period used for the present analysis was insufficient to detect an effect that will emerge over many years following the Games and especially in subsequent winter sport seasons, which this study only captures a small portion of. While one could speculate that if short-term gains in sport participation are not evident, long-term gains, and their connection to the Vancouver Games, would become increasingly unlikely, this remains an open question and one that will hopefully be answered in the coming years as more data on sport participation, both locally and nationally, become available.
References Bauman, A., I. Ford and T. Armstrong. 2001. Trends in Population Levels of Reported Physical Activity in Australia, 1997, 1999 and 2000. Canberra, Australia: Australian Sports Commission. Bauman, A., N. Murphy and V. Matsudo. 2013. “Is a Population-Level Physical Activity Legacy of the London 2012 Olympics Likely?” Journal of Physical Activity and Health 10(1):1–4. Bruning, J.L. and B.L. Kintz. 1977. Computational Handbook of Statistics. 2d ed. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, and Company. Canadian Heritage. 2013. Sport Participation 2010: Research Paper. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Heritage. Coalter, F. 2004. “Stuck in the Blocks? A Sustainable Sporting Legacy.” Pp. 91–108 in After the Gold Rush: A Sustainable Olympics for London, edited by A. Vigor, M. Mean, and C. Tims. London: Institute for Public Policy Research and DEMOS. Donnelly, P. 2010. “Rent the Podium Revisited: Reflections on Vancouver 2010.” Policy Options 31(4):84–86. Donnelly, P. 2011. “Inspiration is Not Enough: Why Sports Mega-Events Always Promise but Rarely Achieve a Legacy of Increased Participation in Sport (A Class Analysis).” Paper presented at the Play the Game Conference, October 3–6, Cologne, Germany. Donnelly P. 2012. “Turning Canada’s Olympic Success into Increased Participation in Sports.” The Toronto Star, July 23. Retrieved July 27, 2012 (http://www.thestar.com/ opinion/editorialopinion/2012/07/23/turning_canadas_olympic_success_into_increased_ participation_in_sports.html).
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Frawley, S., A.J. Veal, R. Cashman and K. Toohey. 2009. ‘Sport for All’ and Major Sporting Events: Project Paper 1: Introduction to the Project. Sydney, Australia: School of Leisure & Tourism Studies, University of Technology Sydney. Green, K. 2012. “London 2012 and Sports Participation: The Myths of Legacy.” Significance 9(3):13–16. Leopkey, B. and M.M. Parent. 2012. “Olympic Games Legacy: From General Benefits to Sustainable Long Term Legacy.” International Journal of the History of Sport 29(6):924–43. Mahtani, K.R., J. Protheroe, S.P. Slight, M.M.P. Demarzo, T. Blakeman, C.A. Barton, B. Brijnath and N. Roberts. 2013. “Can the London 2012 Olympics ‘Inspire a Generation’ to Do More Physical or Sporting Activities? An Overview of Systematic Reviews.” BMJ 3(1):1–8. Mangan, J.A. and M., Dyreson, eds. 2010. Olympic Legacies: Intended and Unintended— Political, Cultural, Economic, Educational. New York: Routledge. Murphy, N.M. and A. Bauman. 2007. “Mass Sporting and Physical Activity Events—Are They ‘Bread and Circuses’ or Public Health Interventions to Increase Population Levels of Physical Activity?” Journal of Physical Activity and Health 4(2):193–202. Toohey, K. and A.J. Veal. 2007. The Olympic Games: A Social Science Perspective. 2d ed. Wallingford, UK: CABI. VANOC. 2007. Olympic Games Impact Program: Baseline Report. Vancouver, Canada: VANOC. Veal, A.J., K. Toohey and S. Frawley. 2012. “The Sport Participation Legacy of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and Other International Sporting Events Hosted in Australia.” Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events 4(2):155–84. Weed, M., E. Coren and J. Fiore. 2009. A Systematic Review of the Evidence Base for Developing a Physical Activity and Health Legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Canterbury, Australia: Centre for Sport, Physical Education and Activity Research, Canterbury Christ Church University. Wellings, K., J. Datta, P. Wilkinson and M. Petticrew. 2011. “The 2012 Olympics: Assessing the Public Health Effect.” The Lancet 378(9797):1193–95.
Guided by the notion of a trickle-down effect, the present study examines whether sport participation in Canada increased following the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Comparing rates of sport participation prior to and following the Games using nationally representative data, the results suggest that the Olympics had almost no impact on sport participation in Canada, although there does appear to be a modest “bounce” in sport participation in the Vancouver area immediately following the Vancouver Games. As such, if the trickle-down effect did occur, the analysis suggests that the effect was locally situated, short-lived, and small. Inspir´ee par la notion de l’effet de retomb´ee, la pr´esente e´ tude examine si la participation sportive au Canada a augment´e a` la suite des Jeux olympiques d’hiver de 2010 a` Vancouver. Les r´esultats de la comparaison des taux de participation au sport avant et apr`es les Jeux utilisant des donn´ees repr´esentatives au niveau national, sugg`erent que les Jeux olympiques ont eu pratiquement aucun impact sur la participation sportive au Canada, mˆeme s’il semble y avoir un faible “rebond” dans la participation au sport dans la r´egion de Vancouver imm´ediatement apr`es les Jeux. Cela e´ tant, si l’effet de retomb´ee s’est produit, l’analyse sugg`ere qu’il a e´ t´e modeste et de courte dur´ee et on l’a ressenti seulement localement.
The analysis for this paper was conducted at University of Lethbridge RDC that is part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). The services and activities provided by the CRDCN are made possible by the financial or in-kind support of the SSHRC, the CIHR, the CFI, Statistics Canada, and participating universities whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the CRDCN’s or that of its partners’. In addition, thank you to the anonymous reviewers of the CRS for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Suzana Burlea for her work on the French translation of the abstract. Thomas Perks, Department of Sociology, University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Dr., Lethbridge, AB, T1K 3M4, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
C 2015 Canadian Sociological Association/La Soci´ et´e canadienne de sociologie
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463
IN AN ERA WHEN a significant proportion of the costs associated with hosting an Olympic Games are paid for with public funds, proponents of the Olympic Movement have increasingly emphasized the long-term economic and social benefits, or legacies, that are incurred by cities and countries hosting the Games. According to Donnelly (2011), this growing emphasis on legacies is not surprising, especially given that neoliberalism, and its general attack on government spending, has increasingly become the dominant political ideology in North America and elsewhere. No doubt aware of this changing economic climate and, in turn, the need to better manage the information on the potential positive economic and social impacts of the Games, in 2003 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) initiated a program, now known as the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) program, for tracking the Games’ legacies. The primary goal of this program, which consists of four reports prepared by Games’ organizing committees spanning a 10-year period before and after the Games, is to enable the IOC to measure, analyze, and promote the impact of the Olympics on a given host city, region, and country based on 126 environmental, socio cultural, and economic indicators (VANOC 2007). After all, how can the IOC and supporters of the Olympic Movement justify the enormous and expanding public spending required to host an Olympic Games at a time when other social and community services, both locally and nationally, are at risk of being cut? The answer, it seems, is the promise of legacies. One of these potential legacies—the promise of increases to sport participation among the general public—is the focus of this study. Over the years numerous stakeholders, such as the IOC, politicians, athletes, and others who stand to gain from funding for elite sport, have propagated the belief that one of the benefits from hosting an Olympic Games for a host city or country is increases to grassroots sport participation (Donnelly 2010). These contemporary claims have historical precedent, as it is well known among Olympic historians that Pierre de Coubertin, considered the founder of the modern Olympic Games, was quite explicit that one of his central reasons for creating the Olympic Movement was to stimulate mass sport participation, and a sport “ethic” (Toohey and Veal 2007). As such, the promise of a sport participation legacy is one of the few legacies ideologically grounded in the fundamentals of Olympism, both as a founding and ongoing objective of the Olympic Movement. In more recent writings on the sport participation legacy, one of the theories put forward in support of the argument that the Olympics act as a catalyst to expand sport participation is the notion of a trickle-down effect; that is, the “process by which mass sports participation is stimulated by public exposure to elite sport” (Frawley et al. 2009:3). Of course, if the trickle-down effect is legitimate then increases to populationlevel rates of sport participation in a host city or country following an Olympic Games compared to rates prior to the Games should be evident. And yet, while a number of studies have critically examined the “legacies”
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concept generally (Leopkey and Parent 2012; Mangan and Dyreson 2010), and the concept of a “sport participation legacy” specifically (Coalter 2004; Green 2012; Wellings et al. 2011), there have been relatively few studies that have empirically examined levels of sport participation prior to and following an Olympic Games to determine what role these kinds of events may have as contributors to expanding rates of sport involvement. Despite anecdotal claims to the contrary, researchers who have examined the impact of the Olympic Games on sport involvement have, for the most part, been unable to find support for the trickle-down theory. For example, based on a review of the literature examining the consequences of hosting an Olympic Games, Weed, Coren, and Fiore (2009) concluded that, of the small number of empirical studies that have been done, none offer any evidence that an Olympic Games has raised sport participation levels within a host population, although they also note that evidence of “better quality” is required. Murphy and Bauman (2007), too, found scant evidence of any impact on individual participation at the population level as a result of hosting a mass sporting event like the Olympic Games, and also that few quality evaluations that speak to this possibility have been conducted (for a systematic review that came to similar conclusions, see also Mahtani et al. 2013). In a more recent article (Bauman, Murphy, and Matsudo 2013), these same authors noted that only one study (Bauman, Ford, and Armstrong 2001) offers some evidence showing what is, at best, a marginal increase to population physical activity levels following the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. However, Veal, Toohey, and Frawley (2012:155) do counter this claim by arguing that any suggestion of increases to sport participation in Australia is “extremely speculative” due to the inadequate and inconsistent collection of data following these Games. Donnelly (2010:86) goes even further and suggests that any claims of a trickle-down effect following an Olympic Games are a “convenient fiction” and that inspiration alone is simply not enough to expand grassroots participation in sport. Set against these claims, the present study is instructive because it provides some evidence for a trickle-down effect following the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada (hereafter referred to as the “Vancouver Games”). This evidence is based on comparisons between levels of sport participation prior to and following the Vancouver Games utilizing nationally representative Canadian data. Importantly, the Vancouver Games are an ideal case study to investigate the trickle-down effect for a number of reasons. First, the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) was among the first host organizations to fall under the new OGI reporting obligations required by the IOC. Second, the goal of increasing sport participation was a part of VANOC’s initial Olympic bid (Donnelly 2012) and featured as part of its “Legacies Now” program. Third, the Vancouver Games have generally been perceived as one of the most successful Games ever for Canadian athletes, having broken the record for the most
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gold medals (14) won by a host nation at a single Winter Olympics (the previous record was 13 gold medals, set by the Soviet Union in 1976 and matched by Norway in 2002). As such, if the trickle-down effect is a legitimate claim, it would make theoretical sense for successful performances by athletes from one’s own country to be a particularly powerful motivator for local citizens to become more active in sport. And fourth, Statistics Canada has collected, in one of its ongoing General Social Surveys, just the type of information required to explore this issue as recommended by both Murphy and Bauman (2007:197) and Weed et al (2009:11). That is, representative population-level information on sport involvement collected in the host city and region (along with comparison communities) prior to and following the Olympic Games.
METHODS The data for the analysis came from the microdata files of the 2005 and 2010 General Social Surveys on Time-Use, conducted by Statistics Canada and accessed through the University of Lethbridge Research Data Centre. In these telephone surveys, representative samples of Canadians age 15 and over were asked to complete a time-use diary detailing their activities over the previous 24 hours by noting their main activity in each 15-minute time period during the day. Although the diaries cover all types of activities, this study focuses on the percentage of respondents detailing involvement in a sport activity, based on a list that included participation in football, field hockey, baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, hockey, basketball, tennis, squash, racquetball, golf, swimming, ice skating, downhill skiing, snowboarding, other skiing, curling, bowling, judo, boxing, wrestling, fencing, rowing, canoeing, kayaking, wind surfing, and “other sports.” Because of the numerous historical and contemporary references in the Olympic literature to sport participation specifically, other forms of physical activity, such as walking, jogging, or hiking, and exercise class or aerobics, home exercises, weight-training, or yoga, were excluded from the analysis. Unfortunately, while a reasonable theoretical argument could be made that there may be more pronounced increases in some sports compared to others (e.g. winter vs. summer sports or Olympic vs. non-Olympic sports), when the measure of sport involvement was broken down by individual sports, or groups of sports, the Ns became too small for meaningful analysis. Therefore, only the more omnibus measure of sport participation that included all sports was used as an outcome in the analysis. This issue of small Ns was also true for attempts at other, more nuanced analyses, such as examining interaction effects for sport participants (i.e., people who never or rarely participate in sport vs. those who regularly participate) and age groups (i.e., younger vs. older Canadians). Since the collection of data was spread out evenly across each survey year and covered a 24-hour period, the percentages presented in the
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tables can be seen as representing the number of Canadians involved in sport on a typical or “average” day. In total, there were 19,597 and 15,390 respondents, in 2005 and 2010, respectively, and samples were adjusted by person weights to ensure percentage estimates were consistent with population counts of Canadians. With the trickle-down theory in mind, the primary research question asked was: Is the percentage of Canadians involved in sport higher in 2010 following the Vancouver Winter Olympics than in 2005? To address this question, one-tailed Z-tests for increases between 2005 and 2010 rates of sport participation at the national, provincial, and municipal (coded based on Census Metropolitan Area groupings) levels were conducted, with comparisons made for varying periods of time (i.e., in the 10 months following the Games and bimonthly).1
RESULTS The percentages presented in Table 1 represent the percentage of Canadians participating in sport on an “average” day from March to December 2010, or the months after the Vancouver Games (which ended February 28, 2010), compared to the same months in 2005. The table also presents percentages for Ontario, Qu´ebec, and British Columbia, and for Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, to allow for some provincial and municipal comparisons. Overall, the patterns of findings in Table 1 provide little support for the trickle-down theory. More specifically, nationally, a pattern of decline in sport participation between 2005 and 2010 (from 6.1 to 5.2 percent) was found, which is consistent with findings of an ongoing decline in sport participation in Canada over this time period reported elsewhere (Canadian Heritage 2013). The table also shows that this pattern of decline was generally consistent at the provincial level as well, as neither Ontario (from 6.2 to 5.3 percent), Qu´ebec (from 6.6 to 5.1 percent), nor even British Columbia (from 5.8 to 5.0 percent), where one might expect the trickledown effect to be strongest, showed statistically significant increases to overall rates of sport participation in the 10-month period following the Vancouver Games. Although the results for the other provinces in Canada are not presented, additional analyses revealed that the pattern of either
1.
Given that they have no influence on the percentage estimates, nor do they change the Z-tests that are based on these estimates, bootstrap weights were not used in the analysis. Of course, bootstrap weights do impact the confidence intervals of the percentage estimates (which are reported in the tables) due to their effect on the size of the estimated standard errors. However, when analyses without and with the bootstrap weights were compared, the effect of the bootstrap weighting on the standard errors, as well as the subsequent sizes of the confidence intervals, was extremely modest, and did not change the patterns of findings in any way. For these reasons, the bootstrap weights were not used in the calculation of the confidence intervals. Instead, the confidence intervals reported in the tables are based on the less computationally demanding and parsimonious approach; that is, they are calculated based on the equation P ± 1.96 P(1 − P)/N . This equation is, after all, the basis for the estimated standard error of the difference in percentages used in the calculation of the Z-statistic, so it aligns well with the Z-test itself.
Exploring an Olympic “Legacy”
467 Table 1
No Significant Increases in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in Sport on an “Average” Day in the 10 Months Following the Vancouver Games over 2005 Levels, by Geographic Area 2005 Geographic area
Canada Select provinces Ontario Qu´ebec British Columbia Select cities Toronto Montreal Vancouver a b
2010
Na
Percentb
N
Percent
Zc
15,671
6.1(5.7–6.5)
12,841
5.2(4.8–5.6)
–3.26
6,078 3,721 2,162
6.2(5.6–6.8) 6.6(5.8–7.4) 5.8(4.8–6.8)
4,981 3,002 1,763
5.3(4.7–5.9) 5.1(4.3–5.9) 5.0(4.0–6.0)
–2.02 –2.59 –1.10
2,550 1,750 1,150
4.9(4.1–5.7) 6.3(5.2–7.4) 4.7(3.5–5.9)
2,150 1,450 950
5.2(4.3–6.1) 4.0(3.0–5.0) 4.6(3.3–5.9)
0.47 –2.90 –0.11
Subprovincial Ns were rounded to base 50 to meet Statistics Canada’s microdata disclosure requirements. 95 percent confidence intervals are reported in parentheses, and are calculated based on the equation
. P ± 1.96 P(1−P) N c The Z-values presented in Tables 1 and 2 represent the test statistic for the difference between 2005 and 2010 percentage estimates. Z-values greater than +1.65 indicate statistically significant increases across survey years at the 95 percent level of confidence (one-tailed). As recommended by Bruning and Kintz (1977:222), the Z-values are calculated using the following equation:
P −P
1 p(1−p) N 1
+
2 p(1−p) N 2
, where p =
N P +N P 1 1
2 2
N +N 1
.
2
stability or, more typically, a modest decline in participation was consistent across every province. This pattern of relative stability or decline, too, existed at the municipal level. Here, the results show that Toronto (from 4.9 to 5.2 percent), Montreal (from 6.3 to 4.0 percent), and again where one might expect the effect to be strongest, even Vancouver (from 4.7 to 4.6 percent) do not show any statistically significant increases in sport participation over 2005 levels. It should be noted that, in addition to the three cities highlighted in Table 1, further analyses (not shown) were done on all cities in Canada with a population greater than 750,000 (which was necessary to ensure Ns were reasonably large), which included Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary, Edmonton, and Qu´ebec City. None of these cities, based on an identical analysis as was done on Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, showed statistically significant increases to rates of sport participation between 2005 and 2010. In Table 2, the same analysis was conducted as in Table 1, only now the results are broken down bimonthly (monthly comparisons could not be made as some cell sizes did not meet Statistic Canada’s disclosure requirements). Bimonthly rates of participation allowed for the examination of whether more temporary increases in sport participation took place in 2010 that may have been masked when only average rates of participation
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CRS/RCS, 52.4 2015 Table 2
With the Exception of Vancouver in March/April (in Bold), no Significant Increases in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in Sport on an “Average” Day in the 10 Months Following the Vancouver Games over 2005 Levels, by Geographic Area and Bimonthly Geographic area Canada
Select provinces Ontario
Qu´ebec
British Columbia
Select cities Toronto
Montreal
Vancouver
a
2005 Percentb
2010 Percent
Months
Na,c
Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec
3,126 3,454 4,045 3,336 1,710
5.2(4.4–6.0) 6.1(5.3–6.9) 8.7(7.8–9.6) 4.8(4.1–5.5) 4.2(3.2–5.2)
2,555 2,563 2,567 2,575 2,581
4.7(3.9–5.5) 5.4(4.5–6.3) 7.6(6.6–8.6) 4.1(3.3–4.9) 4.1(3.3–4.9)
–0.86 –1.15 –1.58 –1.29 –0.16
Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Nov/Dec
1,233 1,288 1,571 1,290 696 697 914 937 891 284 430 447 591 408 286
4.7(3.5–5.9) 5.8(4.5–7.1) 9.2(7.8–10.6) 5.3(4.1–6.5) 4.6(3.0–6.2) 5.3(3.6–7.0) 6.4(4.8–8.0) 10.7(8.7–12.7) 4.4(3.1–5.7) 4.3(1.9–6.7) 4.9(2.9–6.9) 7.5(5.1–9.9) 7.1(5.0–9.2) 4.6(2.6–6.6) 3.5(1.4–5.6)
991 993 996 999 1,001 598 600 600 602 603 350 352 352 354 355
3.7(2.5–4.9) 6.3(4.8–7.8) 9.8(8.0–11.6) 2.6(1.6–3.6) 4.2(3.0–5.4) 5.6(3.8–7.4) 5.5(3.7–7.3) 6.3(4.4–8.2) 4.9(3.2–6.6) 3.4(2.0–4.8) 6.1(3.6–8.6) 3.2(1.4–5.0) 6.0(3.5–8.5) 6.0(3.5–8.5) 4.0(2.0–6.0)
–1.16 0.50 0.51 –3.22 –0.40 0.24 –0.72 –2.94 0.45 –0.66 0.74 –2.62 –0.65 0.86 0.33
Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct Mar/Apr May/Jun Jul/Aug Sept/Oct
550 550 650 500 300 450 400 450 250 200 350 200
4.0(2.4–5.6) 4.7(2.9–6.5) 6.4(4.5–8.3) 4.0(2.3–5.7) 2.8(0.9–4.7) 6.4(4.1–8.7) 9.4(6.5–12.3) 5.9(3.7–8.1) 4.1(1.6–6.6) 2.4(0.3–4.5) 6.5(3.9–9.1) 5.8(2.6–9.0)
450 400 400 450 250 300 250 300 200 200 200 200
3.0(1.4–4.6) 6.8(4.3–9.3) 9.1(6.3–11.9) 1.9(0.6–3.2) 2.4(0.5–4.3) 3.3(1.3–5.3) 6.9(3.8–10.0) 5.0(2.5–7.5) 8.8(4.9–12.7) 2.1(0.1–4.1) 4.8(1.8–7.8) 3.7(1.1–6.3)
–0.85 1.39 1.62 –1.89 –0.29 –1.88 –1.12 –0.53 2.06* –0.20 –0.82 –0.99
N
Z
Subprovincial Ns were rounded to base 50 to meet Statistics Canada’s microdata disclosure requirements. 95 percent confidence intervals are reported in parentheses. c The percentage of sport participants at the municipal level for some of the Nov/Dec bimonthly time periods did not meet Statistic Canada’s disclosure requirements and, therefore, could not be reported. For consistency, none of the Nov/Dec percentages at the municipal level are reported. Notably, none of the Nov/Dec bimonthly percentages in any city showed a statistically significant increase in sport participation between 2005 and 2010. * p ࣘ .05 (one-tailed). b
Exploring an Olympic “Legacy”
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over a 10-month period are considered. As Table 2 shows, both nationally and provincially, there were no statistically significant increases in participation in any two-month period following the Games. This was also true for all of the remaining provinces not presented in Table 2. For the most part this was true at the municipal level as well. Here again both Toronto and Montreal show no statistically significant increases in sport participation in any of the bimonthly time periods following the Games. Vancouver, as well, shows no bimonthly increase apart from one exception. Unlike Toronto and Montreal, and unlike any of the remaining months of the year, in Vancouver, when compared to the same time period in 2005, there was a statistically significant increase in sport participation in the two months (March/April) immediately following the Vancouver Games.2 Importantly, this finding was unique to Vancouver. In other words, it did not occur in Toronto or Montreal, nor did it occur in any other bimonthly time period in any other municipality in Canada with a population over 750,000 that were also examined.3 As a supplement to Tables 1 and 2, Figures 1 and 2 depict these same percentages, only now the differences in the percentages between 2005 and 2010, by both geographic area and time period, are presented. The figures are useful because they provide the reader with a visual representation of the differences across survey years, with Figure 1 summarizing the changes nationally and provincially, and Figure 2 summarizing the changes at the municipal level, to get a sense of both the degree of increase/decrease in sport participation within particular geographic areas and time periods, as well as the comparative differences between them. Here, we see that in both figures declines in sport participation were more common than increases, as well as, in Figure 2, that the increase in sport participation in Vancouver immediately following the Games, while statistically significant, was not particularly substantive, and returned to levels of decline relative to 2005 in subsequent months. 2.
Theoretically, it makes sense for rates of sport participation to correlate positively with the arrival of warmer weather in the spring, which also happens to be during the months immediately following the Vancouver Games. However, comparing the rates of sport participation in 2010, following the Games, with those in 2005 speaks against this interpretation, since if the Vancouver effect is a spring or seasonal effect then one would not expect to see the “bounce” in 2010 relative to the corresponding spring months in 2005.
3.
An examination of the changing demographic characteristics of Canadians between 2005 and 2010, such as age and immigration status, while maintaining adequate sample sizes for meaningful analyses, was not possible with the General Social Surveys data due to the relatively small Ns, particularly at the municipal level of analysis. As such, the role that changes to these (and other) demographic characteristics may have had to the changing rates of sport participation between 2005 and 2010 could not be examined. I would speculate, however, that demographic changes have little theoretical relevance to the finding that the Olympics appear to have had little impact on sport participation levels in Canada. While it is true that these characteristics are likely relevant to a discussion of sport participation trends in Canada more broadly, and in particular for understanding what appear to be ongoing declines in sport participation in Canada over time (which, at the national level of analysis, is evident between 2005 and 2010), discussing these characteristics in the context of the present paper takes the paper away from its central purpose, which is to test for an “Olympic” effect.
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CRS/RCS, 52.4 2015 Figure 1
No Significant Increases Nationally or Provincially in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in a Sport Activity on an “Average” Day between 2005 and 2010, by Time Perioda 5 4
Differences in percentages (%)b
3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug Québec
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
Ontario
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
Nov/Dec
Jul/Aug Canada
Sept/Oct
Mar/Apr
May/Jun
Mar/Dec
-5
BC
Time period by nation and provinces
a
The black bars represent the estimated differences in “average” sport participation from March to December, and the gray bars represent these same estimated differences broken down bimonthly. b Negative percentages indicate a decline in sport participation between 2005 and 2010.
DISCUSSION Based on the present analysis, it appears that the Vancouver Games had very little impact on levels of sport participation in Canada. This is perhaps most clearly seen in Table 2, where there is almost no evidence of any significant bimonthly increases in sport participation in the 10 months following the Games in any of the national, provincial, or municipal levels of analysis. At the same time, the analysis does indicate an increase in sport participation that is specific to Vancouver in the two months immediately following the Games. Importantly, this “bounce” in participation is exactly what one would expect if the theoretical claim that elite sport “trickles down” and inspires others to take up sport were true, at least on a local level. Although the connection is by no means definitive, when this increase in sport participation in Vancouver is juxtaposed with it not occurring in any other major city in Canada, combined with the fact that the Games took place in Vancouver in the immediately preceding month, then this
Exploring an Olympic “Legacy”
471 Figure 2
With the Exception of Vancouver in March/April, no Significant Increases at the Municipal Level in the Percentage of Canadians Involved in a Sport Activity on an “Average” Day between 2005 and 2010, by Time Perioda 5
*
4
Differences in percentages (%)b
3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4
Toronto
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
May/Jun
Mar/Apr
Mar/Dec
Jul/Aug
Montreal
Sept/Oct
May/Jun
Mar/Apr
Mar/Dec
Jul/Aug
Sept/Oct
May/Jun
Mar/Apr
Mar/Dec
-5
Vancouver
Time period by municipalities
a
The black bars represent the estimated differences in “average” sport participation from March to December, and the gray bars represent these same estimated differences broken down bimonthly. b Negative percentages indicate a decline in sport participation between 2005 and 2010. * pࣘ .05 (one-tailed)
suggests that this increase in sport participation in Vancouver can, at least theoretically, be tied to hosting the Games themselves. There are, however, important qualifications to this latter conclusion that must be highlighted. First, if the increase in sport participation in Vancouver can indeed be attributed to the trickle-down effect, then the effect was clearly a local one. As has already been noted, with the exception of Vancouver, it did not occur, at least based on the present analysis, anywhere else in Canada, regardless of whether national, provincial, or local rates were examined. Second, the effect was also short-lived. In other words, in the months following the Olympic Games in 2010, there is only evidence of an increase in sport participation in March and April, which were the two months immediately following the Games. Beyond these two months, rates of sport participation in Vancouver fell back to what might be considered “normal” levels, at least when compared with 2005. And
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third, the effect, while statistically significant, appears to be small. Specifically, the findings suggest a 4.7 percent increase in sport participation in Vancouver in the two months immediately following the Games, from 4.1 percent of respondents in 2005 reporting some sport activity in March and April to 8.8 percent in 2010. Overall, while collectively these findings establish some evidence of a trickle-down effect, the positive contribution of hosting the Olympic Games to levels of sport participation, at least following the Vancouver Games, appears to be locally situated, short-lived, and small. Although the patterns of results do suggest a causal connection, it must be emphasized that any claim of a causal link between the Vancouver Games and subsequent levels of sport participation in Vancouver can only be speculative. After all, the increase in sport participation in Vancouver could have been the result of any number of other factors. For example, unusually mild weather in 2010 in Vancouver compared to 2005 could account for the significant difference in sport participation between survey years. As such, there is simply no way of confirming, at least based on the present data, that sport participation in Vancouver increased because of the Vancouver Games and the trickle-down effect. At the same time, the finding that sport participation increased in Vancouver and not elsewhere, and in the two months immediately following the Games, is at least curious, and lends support to the claim of a causal link. From a policy perspective, if this increase in participation is indeed a consequence of hosting the Olympic Games, than an important challenge for proponents of the Olympic Movement, as well as for researchers interested in what factors lead to a more active citizenry, is to determine how to better enhance this immediate effect and then develop the necessary strategies and actions to sustain or even build upon it over the longer term. Given the present findings, a question worth asking is whether the investment of public money into the Vancouver Games was worth it, at least with respect to increases in sport participation. The paper began by highlighting the formal recognition in the early 2000s of the importance of measuring and promoting the positive legacies that stem from the Games, and how these legacies help justify the significant public costs associated with them. It is also worth noting that in advance of the Vancouver Games, VANOC made increases to sport participation an explicit component of its bid and listed “increased participation in sports” as one of the anticipated outcomes from hosting the Games. Of course, the consequences of increasing sport activity from a population health perspective, such as a more active and healthy citizenry, are clear, and do help justify, to some extent at least, the enormous costs to taxpayers associated with hosting an Olympic Games. However, while a more active citizenry and, by extension, the improved health of citizens is an important policy goal, the results of this study suggest that the spin-off of increases to mass sport participation as a result of hosting the Vancouver Games does not justify the
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significant public investment in them. It was not, based on the present findings, money well spent. While there may be other potential benefits to hosting an Olympic Games for host cities and countries, increases to sport participation, at least for the Vancouver Games, does not appear to be one of them. As a concluding point, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that the present study covers a relatively short period of time (i.e., 10 months) following the Vancouver Games, so the question of what the “longer term” impact of the Games might be remains. Here, it is worth noting that the IOC historically has not distinguished between the short- and long-term effects of hosting the Games, but the underlying message is that the trickledown effect is a long-term phenomenon. As such, it may be the case that the time period used for the present analysis was insufficient to detect an effect that will emerge over many years following the Games and especially in subsequent winter sport seasons, which this study only captures a small portion of. While one could speculate that if short-term gains in sport participation are not evident, long-term gains, and their connection to the Vancouver Games, would become increasingly unlikely, this remains an open question and one that will hopefully be answered in the coming years as more data on sport participation, both locally and nationally, become available.
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