Mega-Sporting Events and the Media in Attention Economies

The present article examines the IAAF World Championships as a commercialized mega-sporting event and an expression of the contemporary experience industry. The focus of the empirical analysis is on the national and international press coverage of the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, 2005. Eleven Finnish and six foreign newspapers were analysed. Finnish pre-Championship publicity saw the games mostly as a tool for achieving international media attention and economic profit. The coverage of the international press was strikingly similar. The newspapers focussed mainly on the sporting events and their perspective was strongly national – perfectly in line with traditional sports journalism. This finding challenges the belief expressed in Finnish newspapers and by proponents of the attention economy that mega-events are powerful tools for urban marketing.