Sporting mega-events in the BRICS countries: questioning their performance

Emerging countries, especially the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), bid to organise sporting mega-events out of a desire to pursue international political and economic promotion, and to strengthen political legitimacy and national cohesion at a domestic level. With these ideas as a starting point, this article analyses the extent to which these mega-events have served the initial purposes of the BRICS, given that, rather than showing their strengths as originally hoped, they have revealed a series of weaknesses. This allows us to question the use of sporting mega-events as a national and international political and economic strategy.