Organizing Small-Scale Sports Events: Issues and Challenges

Chapter Objectives

After completing this topic you should be able to:

• 1.

  Explain the importance of small-scale sports events as a development stimulus for a tourism destination.

• 2.

  Identify the issues and challenges in organizing the small-scale sports event.

• 3.

  Discuss what event organizer should do in order to overcome the issues and challenges in organizing the small-scale sports event.

Introduction

Events tourism has become one of the quick-growing tourism industries. Some of the features that have attracted tourists to participate in events tourism are festivals and special events. Besides that, sport-related travel is a prominent practice in tourism where people travel to a destination to join or attend sports events. Gibson (1998) has stated that events sports tourism consists of several categories such as hallmark events, mega-events, and small-scale sports events (SSSE). SSSE is defined as a normal season or a small unique sports events which provide the residents with more advantage, but there is a small number of difficulties compared to hallmark or mega sporting events (Higham, 1999). The difference between SSSE compared to mega or hallmark events is that small-scale sports events have a slightly lower national impact because the events are organized in a community. Moreover, organizing the SSSE will cost minimal funding, the use of existing infrastructure, and is more feasible in terms of crowding and congestions. Compared to mega-sporting events, SSSE has low coverage of publicity because the organizer of SSSE tends to used social media as a medium of promotion.

Due to the growing interest in SSSE, organizers tend to produce and promote their events to cater to the demands. Most of the events were initiated by the local residents and it had been successfully organized as well as attracted people from other states to participate in the events. However, the argument is that small-scale sporting events can become one of the tourism products for the community. In the attempt to develop and attract visitors to participate in SSSE in order to create economic development for the community, issues and challenges that are faced by this small-scale sports events should be resolved to ensure that small-scale sports events can become one of the tourism attractions. Therefore, the SSSE in the northern area of Malaysia will examine the issues and challenges of organizing this sporting event, and furthermore to discuss the strategic development and directions of this sporting event so that it becomes one of the tourism products in a community.