This report has been written in 2016-17. It analyses events that filled media in 2016 - the year of the Olympic Games in Rio, and the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) sponsored McLaren report confirming Russian State manipulation of the doping control process in relation to the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. 2016 was the year that the Oxford Dictionary singled out ’post-truth’ as the Word of the Year. 2016 was also the year that Donald Trump was elected President of the US in a campaign where he continually lambasted journalists and the media, using social media as his platform rather than open press conferences. Unable to get to Trump, newspapers and TV stations tried to nail him by applying judicious fact-checking. But despite finding a multitude of inaccuracies and outright lies in the Trump’s speeches and presentations, traditional media seem to have made little impression on his supporters. They apparently share Trump’s mistrust of the “liberal media”.

In this socio-economic study, the bidding processes for the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 and the Summer Games in 2024 and 2028 serve as case studies to scrutinize the decisions linked to the bidding process in democratic countries and authoritarian states. Transaction cost economics is employed as a lens to outline the problems that the findings pose for the IOC and to understand why the organization has to keep a certain proximity to authoritarian states for strategic reasons. This measure can be considered an insurance policy because of the high and likely sunk ex ante transaction costs that characterize bids from democratic countries. It will become apparent that keeping good working relations with authoritarian governments helps the IOC to secure the future of its main revenue driver, the Olympic Games, thus providing for its own future.

Abstract: Politicians generally favor hosting mega sports events despite the discouraging evidence of financial benefits or direct economic gain. This paradox is surveyed from two different perspectives. First, we weighed the merits of the most prominent methods of economic analysis of mega sports events. Then, we discuss the ways in which politicians still manage to infer positive gains from hosting this type of event from the literature. Next, we look at a range of frequently intangible effects that could be used in the public debate before submitting a bid but that, paradoxically, rarely are. The most promising of these is making the people proud and happy. However, economists have so far been incapable of adequately valuing the effect of hosting a mega sport event based on happiness. Second, we analyzed the political process parallel to preparing a bid to understand why politicians are persistently keen to host, despite the bleak economic prospects.

The primary aim of this study was to explore the relationship between sports career-related concussions and the subsequent occurrence of symptoms of CMD among former male professional athletes retired from football (soccer), ice hockey and rugby (union). The data presented in this study demonstrate an association between exposure to sports concussion and subsequent risk of symptoms of CMD in former professional athletes across a range of contact sports. Further work to explore the association between sports concussion and symptoms of CMD is required; in the meanwhile, strategies for effective risk reduction and improved management appear indicated.

The public subsidy of Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup hosting opportunities is invariably justified on the basis that they will secure a range of public good outcomes. Problematically, the information available inspires less confidence that these ambitions will be met and highlights how social costs and benefits are unevenly distributed.The impact on children as a particularly stakeholder group reflects this context of recognition and knowledge gap. For example, while it is accepted that immovable deadlines and risk of reputational consequences raise a variety of social justice concerns throughout the event lifecycle, the nature and scale of these impacts on children is poorly understood and frequently mismanaged. Findings highlights how such initiatives present risks and opportunities that cannot be managed effectively until children are included within associated planning processes as a specific stakeholder group with distinct needs and interests.

In a convenience sample of deceased football players who donated their brains for research, a high proportion had neuropathological evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), suggesting that CTE may be related to prior participation in football.