Business of Sport

Concerned with the business, politics, law, and management of the Paralympic and Olympic Games. Projects in this theme inform ethical, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable approaches to sports and event management.

Fields of expertise

  • Business
  • Economics
  • Law
  • Environmental sciences
  • History
  • Education and pedagogy
  • Indigenous studies
  • Tourism and leisure studies

Back to research themes Back to centre page

See below for a selection of active projects in this theme.

Growing profile and fan engagement with the Australian Paralympic Team

Paralympic sport has the power and a platform to engage, inspire and challenge inequality. This project aims to identify and understand Paralympic Australia’s target audience and their media consumption habits.  By increasing outreach and engagement with this market, greater opportunities will be created to employ the influence sport  to create positive social change.

Researchers

Associate Professor Judith Mair

Partners / Funding

  • Paralympics Australia

Status

Active (2023 – present)

Co-Creating the Future Sports Technology Ecosystem

In the lead up to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Queensland Government unveiled plans to transform Southeast Queensland into the ‘Silicon Valley’ of sports technology. Realising this ambition will require supercharged collaboration between the region’s university researchers and our partners in the tech industry. This research project, in collaboration with Sports Tech World Series, aims to identify the barriers and facilitators to universities and industry working effectively together, so that we can build the sports technology ecosystem for the future.

Researchers

Professor John Cairney, Professor Martie-Louise Verreynne, Professor Genevieve Healy, Dr Ana Goode, Dr Stephen Townsend

Partners / Funding

  • Sports Tech World Series

Status

Active

Mapping the Event Management Skills and Knowledge Legacy from the Olympic Games 1988-2000

This project aims to establish to what extent hosting of the Olympics Games generates a legacy of event management skills, knowledge, and networks that support the hosting of other subsequent major events in the host city, creating an eventful city. In doing so, it used event legacy, eventful cities, and event portfolios as underpinning literature, concepts and theoretical frameworks. A mixed methods approach incorporating both a Delphi Study and a series of case studies focusing on each of the eight Olympic Summer Games and Olympic Winter Games host cities between 1988 and 2000, was adopted to address the research questions. The study presents a set of 13 indicators of event management skills and knowledge hosting legacy.

Researchers

Associate Professor Judith Mair, Associate Professor Leonie Lockstone-Binney (Griffith University), Professor Kirsten Holmes (Curtin University)

Partners / Funding

  • Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage

Status

Complete (2020-2021)