European Sport Management Quarterly

Organizational Outcomes Through Event Leverage: A New Research Agenda for Sport Organizations

Over the past two decades, event leverage has emerged as one of the defining theoretical perspectives in sport event management. Moving beyond traditional impact studies, leverage theory emphasizes the strategic actions undertaken before, during, and after an event to achieve desired outcomes rather than assuming that benefits arise automatically from hosting an event (Chalip, 2004, 2006). This shift fundamentally changed how scholars conceptualize value creation through sport events, moving attention from impacts to strategy.

While event leverage has generated considerable scholarship on economic, social, tourism, and sport participation outcomes, there remains no coherent body of research dedicated to understanding organizational outcomes within sport organizations (Preuss, 2007, 2015; Taks et al., 2015; Teare & Taks, 2021). Existing studies acknowledge organizational benefits, including capacity development (Girginov et al., 2017), but organizational outcomes have yet to be conceptualized as a distinct domain of inquiry. This Special Issue seeks to establish that domain.

This Special Issue proposes organizational outcomes as a new conceptual domain within event leverage research. Organizational outcomes are defined as the sustainable changes experienced by sport organizations as a consequence of strategically leveraging sport events. These outcomes may include enhanced organizational effectiveness, organizational efficiency, governance, strategic partnerships, volunteer recruitment and retention, organizational learning, innovation, organizational pride and cohesion, network-strength, organizational capacity, financial sustainability, and system development. Rather than treating these changes as incidental by-products of hosting events, this Special Issue argues that they should become explicit strategic objectives that can be intentionally planned, implemented, achieved, and rigorously evaluated.

Consequently, the proposed Special Issue also represents a shift in the unit of analysis of event leverage research from the event and its host destination to the broader sport ecosystem, including sport governing bodies, sport clubs, sport event organizers and partner organizations, as well as the volunteers, participants, coaches, officials, and administrators who contribute to their functioning. These sport organizations are conceptualized as dynamic systems of people, resources, structures, and relationships that actively create value through strategic leveraging. Instead of viewing sport organizations merely as stakeholders supporting event delivery, this Special Issue positions them as the primary actors through which event leverage can be understood, operationalized, measured, and ultimately justified. This organization-centred perspective represents a significant extension of existing event leverage scholarship.

The timing of this Special Issue is particularly appropriate. Major and non-major sport events continue to receive substantial public investment despite increasing scrutiny regarding their long-term value. Although economic, tourism, and sport participation outcomes remain central to political discourse, evidence consistently demonstrates that many anticipated benefits are modest, difficult to attribute directly to events, or fail to endure over time (Preuss, 2007; Weed et al., 2015; Teare & Taks, 2021). Governments and funding agencies therefore increasingly demand evidence that publicly funded events generate meaningful and sustainable public value. Organizational outcomes provide an important, yet largely overlooked, pathway for demonstrating such value because they focus on strengthening the institutions responsible for delivering sport long after an event has concluded. As such, sport events may foster sport-organization’s strength and allow sport-organizations to gain trust when teaming up with organizations in health, wellbeing or economics.

The purpose of this Special Issue is therefore threefold. First, it seeks to advance the conceptual foundations of event leverage research by establishing organizational outcomes as a coherent and theoretically grounded construct. Contributors will be encouraged to integrate event leveraging theory (Chalip, 2004, 2006) with organizational capacity frameworks (Girginov et al., 2017), systems approaches to sport development (De Bosscher et al., 2006), actor-network theory (Latour, 1996), institutional theory, governance perspectives, and organizational change literature. Collectively, these perspectives provide a richer explanation of how organizational characteristics, networks, capabilities, and institutional environments shape the realization of organizational outcomes.

Second, the Special Issue seeks to advance the methodological foundations of event leverage research. Although organizational outcomes are increasingly acknowledged, they remain inconsistently conceptualized and measured. Existing studies frequently rely on cross-sectional evaluations, isolated indicators, or indirect measures that limit cumulative knowledge building (Taks et al., 2015). Contributors will therefore be invited to develop and apply innovative methodological approaches—including longitudinal designs, mixed methods, participatory action research, comparative case studies, systems-based analyses, and organizational performance frameworks—that improve the conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement of organizational outcomes across different organizational and event contexts.

Third, the Special Issue seeks to generate meaningful practical and policy contributions. For sport organizations, the collection will provide evidence-based guidance regarding how events can be strategically leveraged to strengthen organizational effectiveness, governance, partnerships, volunteer systems, innovation, and long-term sustainability. The emphasis shifts from simply delivering successful events to intentionally developing stronger sport-organizations through events.

From a policy perspective, stronger evidence regarding organizational outcomes offers governments and funding agencies a more robust basis for evaluating public investment in sport events. Beyond informing funding decisions, this research has the potential to reshape event bidding, legacy planning, governance, evaluation frameworks, and sport development policies adopted by governments, municipalities, sport federations, and event organizers. Rather than evaluating events solely through short-term economic or participation impacts, this Special Issue advocates a broader public value perspective in which successful events are also judged by their capacity to strengthen the organizations that comprise the sport ecosystem.

Collectively, this Special Issue seeks to establish a new research agenda that positions organizational outcomes as the central construct within event leverage research and sport organizations as its primary unit of analysis. By integrating conceptual innovation, methodological advancement, and practical and policy relevance, the collection extends the substantial body of event leverage research published in European Sport Management Quarterly while offering a coherent and distinctive contribution that aligns closely with the journal's mission of advancing theoretically informed, methodologically rigorous, and societally relevant sport management scholarship.

This Special Issue focuses on organizational outcomes within the broader sport ecosystem, encompassing governing bodies, sport clubs, sport event organizers, and partner organizations, as well as the participants, volunteers, coaches, officials and administrators who contribute to their functioning. Potential organizational outcomes include changes in organizational effectiveness and efficiency, governance, strategic partnerships, volunteer recruitment and retention, organizational learning, innovation, organizational pride and cohesion, network strength, organizational capacity, financial sustainability, and sport system development.

Contributions may address questions including, but not limited to:

• What organizational outcomes can sport organizations achieve through event leverage?
• How can organizational outcomes be conceptualized and distinguished from broader event impacts and legacies?
• How and under what conditions does event leverage strengthen, or weaken sport organizations?
• Which leveraging strategies and actions generate meaningful and sustainable organizational outcomes?
• How do sport events shape organizational capacity, resources, networks, and institutional relationships, and how do these factors, in turn, influence organizational outcomes?
• How do organizational outcomes vary across event types, sport organizations, and contexts?
• Which theoretical perspectives can best explain how event leverage produces organizational change?
• How can intended and unintended, positive and negative, short- and long-term organizational outcomes be identified and measured? Which methodological approaches can provide robust evidence of whether and how organizational outcomes result from event leverage?
• How can evidence of organizational outcomes strengthen societal and political support for sport events and strengthen event policies and bidding procedures?