Heritage Sporting Event : An Old Recipe for a New Problem

In the last decades, the globalized competition among cities and regions made them develop new strategies for branding and promoting their territory to attract tourists, investors, companies and residents. Major sports events - such as the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup or World and Continental Championships - have played an integral part in these strategies. Believing, with or without evidence, in the capacity of those events to improve the visibility and the economy of the host destination, many cities, regions and even countries have engaged in establishing sports events hosting strategies. The problem of the globalized competition in the sports events "market" is that many cities and regions do not have the resources - either financial, human or in terms of infrastructure - to compete in hosting major sports events. Consequently, many cities or regions have to turn to second-tier sports events. To organise those smaller events means less media coverage and more difficulty in finding sponsors, while the costs - both financial and in terms of services - stay high for the community. This paper analyses how Heritage Sporting Events (HSE) might be an opportunity for cities and regions engaged in sports events hosting strategies. HSE is an emerging concept that to date has been under-researched in the academic literature. Therefore, this paper aims to define the concept of HSE through an exploratory research study. A multidisciplinary literature review reveals two major characteristics of HSEs: the sustainability in the territory and the authenticity of the event constructed through a differentiation process. These characteristics, defined through multiple variables, give us the opportunity to observe the construction process of a sports event into a heritage object. This paper argues that HSEs can be seen as territorial resources that can represent a competitive advantage for host destinations. In conclusion, academics are invited to further research HSEs to better understand their construction process and their impacts on the territory, while local authorities are invited to consider HSEs for the branding and the promotion of their territory.

Cross-Border Place Branding : The Case of Geneva Highlighting Multidimensionality of Places and the Potential Role of Politico-Institutional Aspects

Place branding is not a new phenomenon. The emphasis placed on place branding has recently become particularly strong and explicit to both practitioners and scholars, in the current context of a growing mobility of capital and people. On the one hand, there is a need for practitioners to better understand place brands and better implement place branding strategies. In this respect, this domain of study can be currently seen as 'practitioner led', and in this regard many contributions assess specific cases in order to find success factors and best practices for place branding. On the other hand, at a more analytical level, recent studies show the complexity of the concept of place branding and argue that place branding works as a process including various stakeholders, in which culture and identity play a crucial role. In the literature, tourists, companies and residents represent the main target groups of place branding. The issues regarding tourists and companies have been examined since long by place promoters, location branders, economists or other scholars. However, the analysis of residents' role in place branding has been overlooked until recently and represents a new interest for researchers. The present research aims to further develop the concept of place branding, both theoretically and empirically. First of all, the paper presents a theoretical overview of place branding, from general basic questions (definition of place, brand and place brand) to specific current debates of the literature. Subsequently, the empirical part consists in a case study of the Grand Genève (Great Geneva).

Marketing territorial et branding territorial : une revue de littérature systématique

Le présent article offre un aperçu systématique et complet de la littérature scientifique dédiée au domaine d'étude du marketing territorial et du branding territorial. 1172 contributions publiées entre 1976 et 2016 dans 98 revues différentes y sont analysées à l'aide d'un classement méticuleux dans des catégories et sous-catégories en fonction de l'approche disciplinaire, de la méthode utilisée et de la perspective adoptée. Cette revue de la littérature permet ainsi une vue d'ensemble détaillée de l'état de l'art et fait part des diverses tendances et évolutions concernant ce domaine d'étude en émergence. Elle atteste, entre autres, l'existence d'un flou conceptuel, de définitions divergentes et de faibles assises théoriques : ce qui contribue à un spectre très large d'objets d'étude. Un manque de preuves empiriques et de contributions à caractère explicatif est également observé : les nombreux postulats sur les effets des activités de marketing territorial par rapport à l'attractivité restent à démontrer. Elle souligne aussi un certain désintérêt de la littérature pour le contexte politico-institutionnel dans lequel les territoires s'inscrivent, pourtant crucial en termes de management public. Par ailleurs, ce travail souligne la place importante attribuée à la rhétorique des consultants, avec la publication d'une grande quantité de contributions normatives dans une optique de partage de bonnes pratiques. Pour finir, cette étude constate la présence d'un nombre significatif d'articles critiques.