Sport, Terrorism and Mega Events

The thesis I wish to advance addresses the concern, or at least commentary, in the academic and popular literature about the actions of the State, when responding to security – read terrorist – concerns surrounding major sports events. The spectre of terrorism has created a context in which a raft of security techniques can be deployed in a relatively unquestioning manner, even if examples from elsewhere - Australia and the USA - suggest that the legacy of major sports events is less about sporting outcomes and more about how they serve to condition societies to evermore heightened levels of surveillance. Terrorists have targeted the Olympics and other major sporting events in the past, and may do so in the future, because sport presents a platform for such groupings to achieve their goals. Yet history records that the number of attacks that have taken place during the timeframe of major sporting events is remarkably low and disproportionate to the frenzied reporting of the perceived threat around such events. Thus my argument is about the full impact of strategies designed to respond to a proportionate threat of terrorism at a major sporting event, which the evidence suggests creates something of a security legacy to the occlusion of many other outcomes..