This volume explores sporting mega-events, their social, political, and cultural characters, the value systems that they inscribe and draw on, the claims they make on us and the claims the organisers make for them, the spatial and ethical relationships they create, and the responses of civil societies to them.

This is the first text to focus on the nature of Olympic tourism and the potential for the Olympic Games to generate tourism in the run up and long after the hosting of the Games. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics to London will see an increasing interest in the phenomena of organizing, managing and analyzing the issues.