Abstract

The notion of ‘mega-events’ has attracted considerable academic attention since the late 1990s. It first attracted scholars within leisure and tourism-related disciplines, but interest progressively expanded into sociology, geography and communication studies to name just a few of the other most dominant disciplines. This chapter considers the mega-event debate from a cultural policy perspective, touching on key issues such as the interdependence between local and global agendas, the reliance on global media conglomerates to project (as well as finance) event narratives, the importance of myth-building and the production of collective cultural meanings to frame what is often articulated as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity to tell stories of place and community that can resonate across the world.