Overview
mega-events
Quick Reference
A term for large-scale cultural events that have usually at least a national profile and impact, and often an international one, and that are organized on a larger scale than routine fixtures in the sporting calendar. In sport, the Olympic Games are the epitome of the mega-event (see Olympic Games, modern (as global cultural event)). According to Maurice Roche (Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture, 2000), mega-events are modern and seen as progressive; they can be national and international (this latter divided into multinational, cosmopolitan, supernational, and global); and they have a capacity to reposition cities and places. Roche also identifies three levels of analysis of the mega-event: the ‘event core’ zone, focusing upon the event as performance or drama; the ‘intermediate’ event zone, looking at political and economic uses, functions, aims, and impacts of the event; and the ‘event horizon’, past and present and pitched towards an understanding of the implications of the event and what have also widely been discussed as mega-event legacies. See also media events; spectacle.
