HSBC Golf Case Study

Case Study - World Golf Championships HSBC Champions

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Introduction

Awareness Survey

One of Shanghai's main ambitions in its mega-event strategy is to bring positive impacts to the life of its residents. This case study explores the impacts of the World Golf Championships HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai, China as perceived by host community residents over the past ten years, and how those perceptions affected their attitudes towards the future hosting of this event.

After years of the event having been continuously held in the same location, 855 respondents could not recognise the name of the WGC-HSBC Champions. Over 80% of local residents had not heard about this event before. This might be due to the fact that people in eastern countries are usually more concerned about the basic necessities of their daily life (food, clothes, and housing) rather than sport and entertainment activities, especially those that they are not familiar with, as compared to people in western countries.

Case Study Questions

With regard to host community residents: • Identify reasons behind the lack of event awareness. • What recommendations would you make to improve the awareness of, and support for, future WGC-HSBC Champions and why?

Case Study - World Golf Championships HSBC Champions

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Recognition

The WGC-HSBC Champions was held in a golf club, far from any residential quarters in Songjiang district (at least 5 miles away). Recognition from the host district is slightly higher than other districts. However, the statistics show there is no significance difference (sig. < .005) between the host district and other districts. The same result was found on the impact of the event. It is important to note that the recognition of the people who play golf was much higher than those that do not play golf. However, the results show that golf participation had little influence on the residents' attitudes, indicating that respondents of different golf participation frequency had approximately similar views. Although the WGC-HSBC Champions had massive media exposure of more than 1,500 hours broadcast worldwide (IMG, 2012), the result of this study indicated that the huge broadcast exposure did not generate extensive awareness among local residents.

Descriptive statistics show that over 70% of the respondents gave their support to the future hosting of this event whilst only 1.4% of the respondents were against it. The remaining 28.6% of the participants were neutral. In predicting support for future hosting, not all of the attitude factors were significant. Personal benefits, social benefits, political benefits and social costs were the most significant predictors of residents’ event support. Environmental costs and economic benefits did not affect their attitudes on this aspect.