Economic impact of the sporting events as tourism niche product: A contemporary bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The paper provides contemporary insight into the issue of the economic impact of sporting events to contribute to the ongoing discussion related to the topic and to provide an interdisciplinary understanding beyond sports management literature. This was achieved by implementing the evaluative bibliometric analysis of papers on the economic impact of sporting events published in tourism journals indexed in the Web of Science in the period 2000-2018 years. In addition to the application of evaluative bibliometric analysis, the research includes a comprehensive annotated review of existing literature on the topic, based on the bibliography that corresponds to the research's predefined requirements. The results of the research confirm Bradford's bibliometric law, while the applicability of Price's bibliometric law was denied. In the context of the event type, findings point out that mega-events, such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, are prevalent themes within this tourism specialization. Finally, Tourism Economics achieved the largest production of papers on the researched topic, however, Tourism Management was found to be most influential tourism journal, along with the most influential paper within this specialism published in the same journal in 2005, by Choong-Ki Lee and Tracy Taylor.