Regional legacies of the U20 World Cup : a case study in New Plymouth, New Zealand.

Abstract

The FIFA U20 World Cup is the second largest football tournament in the FIFA calendar. The 2015 edition of the tournament was held in New Zealand. The city of New Plymouth in the Taranaki province is a small provincial city was the host of six games. The aim of the project was to understand the impacts that hosting a major tournament has on small provincial cities. Interviews, crowd participation, news articles, and official documents were analysed to see what sort of impacts were felt in this case study. The research was guided with Chappelet and Junod’s (2006) five types of legacy (infrastructure, social, economic, urban, and sporting) and situated within placemaking literature. Placemaking is an important concept. Using the global exposure given from this tournament, there is a push to reimage Taranaki as an events destination, and develop it accordingly. This can be seen in the types of legacies left from the tournament. There was evidence of all five legacies, with defined examples coming from social, economic, and infrastructure. Sporting and urban legacies were found to be attached to all different types of legacy. It was found that there was a key focus on youth in this tournament. This promises to have further positive effects in both the local community, but also the football community. Economically, there is a push to capitalise on this and push to host more events. Infrastructural legacies related to the creation of new football pitches for the local community. Helps build social and sporting legacies as well. These interacting legacy-making and place-making processes are co-constitutive, and the economic development win-win narrative plays a significant role in this co-constitutiveness. The stadium is important in all of this, as is the sporting culture of the region and the boosterist effects of successful hosting experiences.