Despite the heavy rain through the event the interviews, which were done immediately after the championships, show that people in Helsinki primarily had good feelings about the games, with 75 per cent thinking the event was important for Helsinki and 72 per cent feeling the games had been a success. Two-thirds hoped Helsinki would apply for similar large sports events in future, too. Traffic jams were the greatest perceived drawback. If we consider the real advantages of the championships, such as publicity, we may even ask whether people's assessment of the importance of the games was not too optimistic. The article also uses the findings to draw a larger picture of the various dimensions and characteristics of a large modern sports event.

In city development agendas, sporting mega-events are often linked to conceptions about beneficial economic and marketing effects. This was true also for the IAAF World Championships that took place in Helsinki in August 2005. However, this article focuses on the various ways in which the "home crowd", i.e. the inhabitants of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area engaged themselves in the games.

The survey used structural telephone interviews to collect the data. A total of 1,000 interviews, of people aged 15 years or over, were conducted 16-22 August 2005 in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The survey and the questionnaire were planned by Mats Nylund and carried out by TNS Gallup Ltd. The questionnaire contained 25 questions or statements with ready-made answers. Two questions could be answered freely in one's own words. The methodological principle was that respondents should have the opportunity not to express an opinion and to answer "can’t tell". To ensure statistical significance, the number of respondents in each of the municipalities Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa was calculated pro rata to the city's population figure.

When assessing the social impact of the championships a crucial aspect is of course how permanent these effects finally turn out to be. Foreign newspapers described Finns as a nation of athletics fans. And yet as we saw earlier, the popularity of athletics has slowly been declining in Finland. Would the World Championships have contributed to reverse this trend, or would any attempt of that kind have been in vain?

Also, it is important to realize that the championships were not only about sports. In fact, the results from face-to-face interviews conducted at the Championship Square support the hypothesis that the audience took an interest in the World Championships primarily as an event, and only secondarily as an athletics competition. This would indicate, among other things, that there are several ways of creating attractive urban sporting events. Obviously, one way is to bid for global mega-events, such as the IAAF World Championships. Another way, arguably important too, is to promote local, less institutionalized, and perhaps even seemingly weird, initiatives on how to combine sports and other forms of urban life.

City of Helsinki Urban Facts
Mr. Mats Nylund, tel. +358 9 169 3610

11/11/2005

Mats Nylund

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Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

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