Assessing the Impact of a Sports Event From Big Data

The chapter explores the event experience from the audience’s perspective through a Big Data approach, investigating the links between users and their sentiments, such as attitudes, opinions, views and emotions, expressed on Twitter. The study offers a contribution to understanding how social media activities vary in terms of their function and their influence on a sports event. Studies in tourism and hospitality management have revealed a variety of factors that influence evaluations of the possible benefits from hosting events. In many cases, the benefits lead to new editions of the event, as the over one hundred editions of Giro d’Italia show. Furthermore, social impacts are often used as one of the main justifications for staging and funding future events. Organizers are therefore increasingly focused on the promotion of positive attitudes among local residents of the hosting places and different stakeholders involved in the events. However, each organizer employs a different methodology and formula to evaluate the outcomes of the event, and it is therefore difficult to compare impacts of one event against another.Numerous authors agree on the important perceived role of sporting events in changing or enhancing the destination image of the host places. In this regard, social media could be useful to enable the faster identification of factors influencing attendance preferences and evaluations. Internet communities are places where fans and supporters get together and develop emotional ties with their favorite team, regardless of geographic locations. However, research has paid little attention to the possibilities of social media for analyzing sports event. Thus, the use of Big Data through social media and digital interactions can provide new insights for creating new sources, beyond traditional sources of data as a natural part of event planning and management.