"The Social Impact of Wide-Scale Sport Events"

Social capital is a key component of understanding the relationship between European sport governing bodies and civil society. However, researching social capital in the context of sport governance today requires bringing together two categories of academic literature since, in practice, social capital is often revealed in the field of sport management in complex ways that are both local and universal yet are rarely named or aknowledged as ‘social capital’. The paper examines the process and outcome of the sustainability reporting on the last Olympic Winter Games, held in Torino in February 2006, basing on the experience of Bocconi University as scientific partner in this process. Compared to previous Games, Torino Olympics were characterized by a structured sustainability strategy, whose social dimension turns out to be useful in analysing and discussing the opportunities of social capital production for hosting areas, related with the organisation of the events.