The Effects of Sports Mega-Events on Host Communities: A Systematic Review of Studies in Three Recent Decades

Purpose: This review was purposed to systematically explore how host communities have been affected by the sports mega-events. This systematic review identified the related literature strengths and weaknesses, identified the existing gaps in this regard, and provided the following researchers with new state-of-the-art strategies and implications.Methodology: The Web of Science databases, Scopus, Google Scholar and PubMed have been thoroughly explored. Moreover, a manual search has been carried out in the most relevant references and documents to ensure sufficiency. Indeed, data surveys and extraction were conducted based on a predefined protocol, and finally, 40 selected documents have been analyzed.Findings: The results revealed that the effects of sports mega-events on the host communities could be categorized into positive and negative ones. Most studies have explored subjects inferred from the findings, including socio-economic impacts, tourism, heritage, image, media, hygiene, cultural, and environmental effects. However, other affected has implications by prostitution-related, psychological, spatial, commercial, voluntary, financial and recreational issues have been rarely considered.Originality: This study provides policy-makers and event planners with a complete summary of the studies conducted in the past three decades, which is a valuable and credible source to realize the related decision-making processes. Reviewing the documents revealed points about the effects of holding big events that had previously received less attention.