Mega-sport events, gender equity, and sport legacy planning: mobilizing performativity for deeper insights

Mega-sporting event legacies have attracted academic interest and examination over the last two decades. The development of legacy plans has become central to sport event bidding, acting as a means of prioritizing outcomes by governing bodies and host governments. Through legacy plans, mega-sport events ‘perform’ as catalysts for change throughout various phases. Drawing on an appraisal of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games official legacy documents and selected interviews, we consider the performative role of legacy in what counts as data, whose voices are included and how they are represented in official narratives. Using feminist theory, we analyse what is (un)stated and how discourses come to matter in legacy narratives. Our analysis found that legacy plans reinforced persistent issues of gender inequity through broad statements with few details. By mobilizing a feminist notion of performativity we identify important insights that can support a more sustainable, equitable and gender-responsive approach.