Abstract:

Events are important motivators of tourism and are often embedded in the development and marketing plans of destinations. Sport events became an increasingly important subcategory of 'event tourism' as a phenomenon in the last decades, therefore the current paper aims is to balance the positive and negative impacts of this type of tourism. As the actual political and economical situation shape in high level these events and correspondingly the host community and the participants, together with the social, economical and environmental impacts, these circumstances has to be researched on a regular basis. Given that, the highest impact on can be traced regarding the mega sport event tourism, the current research mainly focuses on these events, but in the same time does not neglect the importance of the small-scale ones. The research methodology used is descriptive, based especially on bibliographic documentation over time. Results indicate, that the last decade has brought several changes in the judgement of the mega-event organisation, more emphasis being on the implementation of sustainability principles, the reduction of the negative social and environmental aspects that the events and the spectators can have on the host community, and balancing the highly boosted pre-event economic promises.