Ten years ago, London hosted the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Hosting the Games had been sold to the British public on the slogan that it would “inspire a generation”.

The idea of inspiring a generation chimed with the basic aim of the Olympic Movement, which is to “build a better world”. It seeks to do this by nurturing the values of Olympism, which are defined as “excellence, respect and friendship”.

In practical terms, this goal reflected the UK’s desire to reinvigorate its international image. It also appealed directly to British political ambitions to solve the nation’s growing obesity epidemic through the commonly held, but often misunderstood, assumption that elite sporting success leads to an increase in people taking part in sport. This is more formally referred to by sports economists as the “demonstration effect”.

The trickle-down effect of the Olympic Games
If inspiring a generation meant increasing sports participation among young people, then the evidence for this is, at best, inconclusive. At worse, it suggests spectacular failure. A review of the evidence of a demonstration effect of hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games concluded

If the primary justification for hosting an Olympic Games is the potential impact on sport participation, then games are a bad investment.

The UK government’s annual Taking Part Survey has tracked the impact on the British public, of engaging with sport and culture, since 2012. The data reveals no discernible legacy effect of the London 2012 Olympics in terms of increased participation in sport. Compared with two years before the Games were held, the proportion of children aged five to ten years old who take up sport has not grown. And there has only been a small increase in the proportion of adults taking up sport.

This trend is consistent with that of other host cities. We conducted a study looking the legacies of cities that hosted the Summer Olympic Games between 1996 and 2020. We found that, except for the Beijing 2008 games,

Read more: https://theconversation.com/london-2012-olympics-how-it-boosted-medal-winning-but-failed-to-inspire-a-generation-187383