Global sports events are rarely far from the public eye. Such mega-events are about much more than the sporting competitions themselves. They entail global exposure and intense struggles by different stakeholders.This is the first book to examine sports mega-events from a mobilities perspective. It analyses the 'mobile construction' of global sports mega-events and the role this plays in managing labour, imaginaries, policies and legacies. In particular, the book focuses on the tension between the various mobilities and immobilities that are implied in the process of constructing a mega-event. It seeks to uncover the ways in which an event is a series of fluid interactions that occur sequentially and simultaneously at multiple scales in diverse spheres of interaction. Contributions explore the dynamics through which mega-events occur, revealing the textures and nuance of the complex systems that sustain them, and the ways that events ramify throughout the international system.

Introduction: Exposing Sports Mega-Events through a Mobilities Lens Noel B. Salazar 1. Pulling Back the Curtain: On Mobility and Labour Migration in the Production of Mega-Events Thomas F. Carter 2. The Production of the Spectacle: Conceptualising Labour and Global Sports Mega-Events John Horne and Wolfram Manzenreiter 3. Olympic City Los Angeles: An Exploration of the Urban Imaginary Greg Andranovich 4. Virtual Mega-event Imaginaries and Worldmaking Imperatives Rodanthi Tzanelli 5. Made in Transit: Mega-Events and Policy Mobilities John Lauermann 6. The Relay of Mega-Event Activism: Why Global Organising Bodies Need to be Targeted Jill Timms 7. Sport Mega-Events as Mega-Projects: Interaction Effects and Local Mobilities Harry H. Hiller 8. Leveraging the Olympic Games: Universal and Local Imaginaries and Mobilities Vassil Girginov 9. An Agenda for Future Mega-Event Research Sarah Van den Broucke, Christiane Timmerman, Robin Vandevoordt and Luana Gama Gato. Afterword: Mobilities and Mega-Events: Four Challenges, One Warning