Abstract

All events have impacts (Hall 1997). More specifically, all events or, at least, planned events have a purpose or objective and, hence, intended, desired and predicted (and, on occasion, unanticipated) outcomes. These, in turn, have impacts on host communities, participants and other stakeholders who, as Getz (2007: 300) puts it, are ‘impacted’ by the outcomes of events. Such impacts may be positive or beneficial. Indeed, it is the expected benefits of events, whether economic, social, cultural, political or environmental, that is the principal driver underpinning the support for and increasing popularity of them at the local, national and international scale. Of course, the impacts of events may also be negative. That is, events almost inevitably incur costs or have negative consequences that, to a lesser or greater extent, serve to reduce their net benefit. Thus, a key task for event managers is to not only identify and, as far as possible, predict the impacts of events, but to manage them in such a way that benefits are optimized and negative impacts are minimized so that, ‘on balance the overall impact of the event is positive’ (Bowdin et al. 2006: 37).