The eventIMPACTS Toolkit has been developed by UK Sport, Visit Britain, Event Scotland, the London Development Agency, the North West Development Agency, Yorkshire Forward and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau. It comprises some key guidance and good practice principles for evaluating the social, economic, environmental and media-related impacts associated with staging major sporting and cultural events. The toolkit assesses economic and media-related impacts, but also social and environmental impacts. For instance, eventIMPA CTS highlights that there is a variety of established approaches to quantifying the media impact of events, including the benefits of place marketing. Because methods of measuring and reporting on impacts can be inconsistent, event organisers have sometimes struggled to understand which methods will best suit their needs. In these respects, therefore, the purpose of eventIMPA CTS is to provide organisers with templates for carrying out, or commissioning, such studies which are based on some central principles and which will facilitate comparison across events. A relatively new agenda, for which there is little supporting evidence, is that major events can deliver directly, or act as catalysts for, wider social impacts such as the development of the community and development of skills. Furthermore, as environmental issues become increasingly significant, event organisers should be mindful of the potentially adverse environmental impacts of events. In these respects, eventIMPACTS is designed to help event organisers move towards more developed approaches to measuring, monitoring and managing the social and environmental impacts of their events.
