A systematic Review of Multi-host nations and Mega Sport Events: Towards a Research Agenda for Co-hosted Events

There is various research highlighting event impacts for multi-host nations (Walzel & Eickhoff, 2023; Mukanova, Hautbois & Desbordes, 2024; Ribiero & Cunha de Almeida, 2024). The research identified has focused on the social value of co-hosting events (Walzel & Eickhoff, 2023); organisational learning through co-hosting (Mukanova, Hautbois & Desbordes, 2024) and community perspectives (Ribiero & Cunha de Almeida, 2024). Despite this clear emerging discourse on the co-hosting of sport events by multiple nations, the cultural implications are yet to be investigated, which creates a need to investigate how these different cultures influence the event planning process for multi-host nations. Furthermore, there is a general lack of knowledge on multi-host nations co-hosting sport events and propose that there is a need to investigate the positive and negative impacts and legacies of mega sport events co-hosted by multiple nations (Bakhsh et al., 2018; Byun, Leopkey & Ellis, 2020). This systematic literature review paper therefore aims to highlight existing studies and theories around multi-host nations and mega sport events to identify the gaps and set precedence which will guide future empirically driven research in this area. It seeks to answer the following questions: What research has been conducted on multi-host nations and mega sport events?; What are the theoretical and practical gaps (for who and what in terms of contribution?); and What lessons can be taken from existing literature to inform future research? Increasing knowledge in this area is important as multi-hosting of mega events has also become popular over the years. For example, the 2026 Men’s FIFA World Cup Games will be hosted by three different countries namely, the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Similarly, the 2030 Men’s FIFA World Cup Games will be hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain. The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup has a longer history of co-hosting in comparison to other sport mega-events; this multi-hosting phenomenon can be dated back to 1983, where England and Wales shared the hosting rights, which also continued in other years (i.e., 1992, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2027) (ICC, 2019). In 1999, while England dominated the number of matches, the hosting rights were shared with four other nations, namely Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands, and Wales. Previously, neighbouring countries, Australia and New Zealand hosted the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. Within the context of developing nations, it is important to note that South Africa co-hosted the 2003 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup with Zimbabwe and Kenya, which was the first edition to be played in Africa, and will co-host the 2027 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup with Zimbabwe and Namibia Following the systematic literature review flow proposed by Tawfik et al. (2019:2), the study will analyse academic peer reviewed published work, from the turn of the millennium to 2024, that are relevant to the topic. The scope of publication dates was selected to acknowledge earlier studies that may have been conducted around the mega sport event that had multiple hosts prior to 2000 (i.e. 1992, 1996 and 1999 ICC Cricket World Cups). A wider scope will also help to map the shifts in themes, approaches and highlight persistent knowledge, practice and policy gaps to map out a clearer direction for future research. While the findings of this study will be available at the time of the conference, they will show the research that has been conducted on multi-host nations and mega sport events, highlighting and key themes and theoretical and practical gaps in this area of interest. Understanding this is important to inform future research and in the context of upcoming mega events co-hosted by multiple nations, this could elicit important practical lessons for planning such events.