Towards a better understanding of digital sporting legacy: A knowledge management perspective

Legacy lessons from sporting events take several forms, often classified as cultural, social, political, environmental, urban and economic. Other ways to classify sporting legacy are based on categories such as planned and unplanned, positive and negative, intangible and tangible legacy. Whilst there is consensus that all dimensions of sporting legacy are relevant for society, the extant literature focuses mainly on the physical dimensions of legacy and their impact on society of the hosting country. In addition, the majority of the literature overlooks the role of digital in its impact on events legacy in general and sporting ones specifically. As a result, there is a need to better understand the digital and intangible nature of digital legacy. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a conceptual model to better understand the digital legacy of sporting events. The proposed model explores the digital interaction between the event participants and with the planning and operational networks responsible for the success of the event. In particular, the study focuses on how the alignment of strategies and operations from several knowledge domains including the management of the sporting event itself and that of its context can define the variety and importance of its legacy for all stakeholders.