Last week, Brazil unveiled its $10 billion infrastructure budget for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Here in the UK, it's coming up to two years after the London Games and, with the football World Cup in Brazil and The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow both imminent, it's more reason to reflect on the impacts of inviting one of the world's great sporting circuses to pitch its Big Top on your village green. We're only too aware of how precarious our own Olympic legacy is at the moment, approaching two years since the games and with only an occasional glimpse of any tangible evidence of the social and economic benefits we were promised.

What does the research say about major sporting events and their impact? The consistently arrived at conclusion across major sporting events research is that the economic benefits are negligible at best;

'Research has shown that there are neither significantincreases in tourism, nor in full-time employment levels, nor regional economic growth arising from hosting events. And yet the public does not appear to penalize politicians through the ballot box for their erroneous claims; indeed most politicians calculate that hosting events can only enhance their political standing. This makes sense if the benefits of hosting are not derived through economic gains, but through the feelgood factor, specifically associated with being the host.' (Kavetsos & Szymanski, 2010)

In terms of the power of major sports events to inspire participation there are occasional success stories, the Rugby World Cup in South Africa in 2003 being a good example, but generally the research says much the same: at best there is some evidence of a negligible spike in participation in the short-term, but otherwise; 'most of the evidence suggests that major sporting events have no inevitably positive impact on levels of participation,' (Fred Coalter in the DCMS report, Game Plan).

So what about the 'feel-good' factor, at least we're all made happier by the World Cup or the Olympics when we get to experience them on our own doorstep, right? Again the research says otherwise. Studies have shown that the 'feel-good' factor is there for football World Cups, (even appearing to reduce suicide rates for the country and the year in which the occur, according to Stefan Szymanksi and Simon Kuper in their 2009 pre-cursor to Soccernomics), but only in the short-term. Morale-boosts are generally insignificant for athletics events and even then depend on better than expected home-team performance. The recent House of Lords' report on soft power: Persuasion and Power in the Modern World however, showed their enthusiasm for the less tangible benefits of an international reputation for being a home to great sport, citing the power of the Olympic Games as a medium to showcase some of our best features, improving other nations' perceptions of the UK. This report also states that, 'over 37 UK firms have won a total of £130 million through 62 contracts' in Brazil as a result of collaborations on transport and security for the 2016 Games. It also records Maria Miller's claim of a significant boost in tourism as a result of the Olympics.

So maybe the London Games has bucked some of these trends in research-findings, but it's fair to say that the 2012 sport for development legacy is at best as yet unrealized...

Luke Regan is Researcher for The Sports Think Tank. Part 2 of this article will be published next week.