Queensland Events and Festivals: Legitimacy of Public Spending Essay

This essay examines the legitimacy of public spending on events and festivals, using the Queensland government's 2032 Olympics bid as a case study. It analyzes arguments for and against such spending, considering the economic and social impacts, stakeholder perspectives, and the importance of sustainability. The essay explores how governments can legitimize these events by effectively engaging stakeholders, demonstrating the long-term benefits, and addressing concerns about resource allocation. The discussion incorporates academic research on event management, policy, and evaluation to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in organizing and funding large-scale events, particularly in times of economic constraint or crisis. It also explores the different factors that determine the legitimacy of an event and the strategies that can be undertaken to mitigate these issues. The essay concludes by emphasizing the crucial element of the events and the benefits and problems of organizing an event presents a transparent argumentative case that has made the study more compact.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Events, Policy and Evaluation
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note:

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Introduction
Festivals are an important sub-field within the event studies and occupy a major role
in the emerging literature on the different kinds of the key characteristics of the organization.
Festivals especially the cultural festivals and events forms an important part in the life of
different global communities. These events are thus important in a community and even in
times of serious crisis, the people does not shy away from organizing or celebrating these
festivals. For the politicians and the policy makers of a community, the organization of these
events even in times of serious crisis can act as a major boost for them as such activities can
help them to keep their image intact within the community and also share a sense of positivity
across the community (White & Séraphin, 2018). However, there is a serious angle to these
developments as a substantial number of people in the community refers such arrangement of
events to simple waste of resource and money in times of crisis. They believe that these
resources can be utilized to mitigate the crisis and ensure the presence of stability in the
community.
The report here identifies a similar situation where the State Government of
Queensland with necessary backing from the Prime Minister of Australia has decided to bid
for the 2032 summer Olympics (7news.com.au, 2020). The protest registered by Senator
Pauline Hanson against the bid for 2032 Olympics through the launch of a new advertising
campaign has gained grounds. The fact that she brings forward in view of her protest is the
present $90 billion debt of the state along with the problem of water in the state. She explains
the huge budget that needs to be allocated to the arrangement of the largest multinational
sports event can cost them a whopping $12.5 billion which will add further woes to the
existing problems (7news.com.au, 2020). The suggestion of the senator in the current
situation has been to immediately abandon such ideas and rather prepare to invest these
amount to limit the loan amount and invest heavily on the development of Queensland

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(7news.com.au, 2020). The essay has presented an argumentative discussion of these topic on
the legitimacy of events and festivals.
Events and festivals
An event is one of the major activity that helps to ensure a proper engagement with all
the people living in a community. The involvement and the engagement of the community act
as key to the success of an event (Adongo & Kim, 2018). It is important for the organized
event to help bring the community together. The event helps the community to come under
one profile and engage all the people in the community. Apart from local events, there are
also large events where people from different communities come together and ensure the
presence of a larger gathering of different cultures (Adongo & Kim, 2018). These events are
important for the bringing together of people and ensuring the spread of cultural knowledge
accordingly.
Legitimacy of events and festivals
The sustenance and institutionalization of different types of the local festivals
generally hinge on the extent that leads the major stakeholders to work together in an
effective manner. The legitimacy of festival or an event is mainly dependent on a number of
different factors. This include the likes of demographic factors, availability of resources,
socio-economic condition and finally the availability of the Human Resources (White &
Séraphin, 2018). The mentioned factors thus plays a crucial role in making an event
legitimate. The most common literary idea about events is the benefit that it provides to a
community. Organizing an event can really be beneficial for a community. At the very
beginning it helps all the communities to come together which helps to spread a cultural
awareness among the people, secondly it has a great positive impact as the country or the

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community that arranges such events gains a substantial amount of financial return from such
arrangements.
In a total contrast to these major benefits, there are a large number of different issues
that can be quite problematic for the arrangement of such major events. Though the
arrangement of such events can guarantee huge financial return, the arrangement of events
requires huge financial backing from shareholders and sponsors. The absence of such a
backing can be a major problem for the arrangement of events (Vestrum, Rasmussen &
Carter, 2017). The example of Queensland has been a great example which shows the
absence of the minimum responsibility of the Government to use the financial resource in
order to develop the state.
Sustainability and Festivals
Sustainability is one of the most trending issues in all the different industrial sectors.
The event industry is no odd one out in this case and thus sustainability has a great
significance in the event industry too. Events are important pull factors in terms of tourism
industry and thus the event needs to have a solid sustainable nature to ensure success. In
order to limit the negative impacts of the environment as well as the local population an event
must have a sustainable nature (Vestrum, Rasmussen & Carter, 2017). The sustainability in
the event industry is generally determined by means of the presence of a stable economic
background as well as a presence of a stable political background. The stability in all these
sectors can help assure a sustainable nature for the events. For example it will never be
feasible in the recent future to organize Olympics or event of such nature in places like Kabul
or Burkina Faso due to the political instability. On the other hand, it will also be difficult for
countries with an unstable economic background to organize large-scale events. Thus
sustainability forms an important part in the arrangement of the events.

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Strategies for gaining Legitimacy
The starting or organization of a new event requires a range of resources. The major
problem with the finding of the resources is the absence of the proper resources
(Michopoulou & Wallace, 2019). It will be the most important task for the authorities to
ensure the financial, economic and political stability of the place where the event takes place
(Vestrum, Rasmussen & Carter, 2017). The legitimacy for gaining maximum success in the
organization of the event are as follows;
a. Complying with the internal environment
b. Complying with the external environment
c. Manipulation of the internal environment
Therefore it can be assessed that the presence of resource and the presence of a stable
internal and external environment can be said to be the key to success of the event and also to
legitimize the event in a proper manner.
Conclusion
The essay presented here has highlighted a crucial element of the events. The choice
of the subject and research on it has helped to gain a great idea on the legitimacy of the
events. The legitimacy of the events is important as because a legitimate event is much more
significant and necessary for the community than an illegitimate event. The identification of
the issues that cause s problems for the event to gain legitimacy and the strategies that can be
undertaken to mitigate these issues has made these essay quite interesting. Moreover, the
benefits as well as the problems of organizing an event presents a transparent argumentative

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case that has made the study more compact. The essay will surely add depth to the already
present literary works on the same subject and will surely act as a great source of information
for any type of future research studies on the same subject.

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References
Adongo, R., & Kim, S. (2018). Whose festival is it anyway? Analysis of festival stakeholder
power, legitimacy, urgency, and the sustainability of local festivals. Journal of
Sustainable Tourism, 26(11), 1863-1889.
Batty, R. J. (2016). Understanding stakeholder status and legitimate power exertion within
community sport events: A case study of the Christchurch (New Zealand) City to
Surf. In Managing and developing communities, festivals and events (pp. 103-119).
Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Michopoulou, E., & Wallace, K. (2019). The stakeholder sandwich-a new stakeholder
analysis model for events and festivals.
Oja, B. D., Stensland, P. J., Bass, J. R., & Zvosec, C. C. (2019). Under the Lights: The
Legitimacy, Survival, and Institutionalization of Rural Amateur Baseball. Leisure
Sciences, 1-18.
Pauline Hanson calls for Queensland to ditch 'irresponsible' Olympics bid. (2020). Retrieved
16 March 2020, from https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/pauline-hanson-calls-
for-queensland-to-ditch-irresponsible-olympics-bid-c-651411
Vestrum, I., Rasmussen, E., & Carter, S. (2017). How nascent community enterprises build
legitimacy in internal and external environments. Regional Studies, 51(11), 1721-
1734.
Warren, G., & Dinnie, K. (2018). Cultural intermediaries in place branding: Who are they
and how do they construct legitimacy for their work and for themselves?. Tourism
Management, 66, 302-314.

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White, E., & Séraphin, H. (2018). Sustainability and festivals. Green events and green
tourism: An international guide to good practice, 63-71.