Olympic Games and Fifa World Cup Are the Leading and Largest Sporting Events in the World

Background information

Olympic Games and FIFA World cup are the leading and largest sporting events in the world.

Olympic Games are the major and foremost international events which include Summer and Winter competition. The Olympic Games are currently taking place every 4 years and more than 200 countries participate in the event. Over 13000 athletes around the world contend at the Summer and Winter Olympics which contain 33 types of sports and nearly 400 events. According to the statistic, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics is estimated to draw approximately 600 million viewers. 30.6 million audiences witnessed the occasion. The official figures reveal that there are 6.52 million tourist arrivals during the Beijing Olympics. According to the report of Beijing Statistics Bureau, the total revenues of the tourist spots in the city are 162 million yuan (23 million U.S. dollars). The official survey shows that Beijing received 25.6 million tourists and produced 50.4 billion yuan from October to December 2008.

FIFA World cup is one of the greatest sport events all over the world. It is an international association football competition between the senior men’s national teams of the members of Federation Internationale de Football Association. Millions of spectators watched and got involved in the match. For example, the 2010 World Cup final soccer match between Spain and The Netherlands draw 700 million viewers. The games held every 4 years since 1930 and are hosted by various countries. According to the survey, the viewers of all tournaments of the 2006 FIFA World Cup are nearly 26.29 billion. People who watched the final match was estimated to be 715.1 million.

Possible areas of concern

Without doubt, massive and substantial profit can be derived from staging sporting events. For example, numerous job opportunities created in hospitality-related sectors. However, the hosting of mega events may also lead to many serious problems.

For instance, the influx of tourists may possibly bring numerous problems to the local residents such as congestion in public transport, uncivilized behavior like littering and the growing crime rate which may definitely affect the life quality and life satisfaction of the local residents.  

Besides, the investment in the construction of sport facilities such as arenas and supporting infrastructure like road construction and redeveloping of building and landmarks. The construction costs are ultimately expensive and the process of construction may certainly dozen of environmental problems such as the emission of greenhouse gases.

The reason why we have chosen this issue

In consideration of the universality and popularity of International sport events like FIFA World cup and Olympic Games, it is believed that this topic is worthy of being studied. It is universally known that these kinds of mega events always capture extensive attention worldwide. The media coverage and attention is ultimately high. According to the statistic from the Olympic Program Commission regarding the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, the average number of articles per publication for the Games was 67 from 25 countries which were chosen to be the typical of the global coverage. Also, the mega sport events can appeal a large amount of viewers and in-home audiences. According to the data of 2006 World Cup, there are a total accumulative viewers of the 98 competition in France has recorded total 27 billion.