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This paper aims to explore a multi-stakeholder perspective on brand meaning co-creation in the context of the Olympic Games as a unique mega sports event brand with a strong brand identity, to understand how the brand manager may integrate such co-created meanings in a negotiated brand identity.

Using a qualitative methodology, the paper provides a tentative framework of co-created Olympic brand meanings by exploring the narratives of stakeholders’ brand experiences of the brand. Sixteen semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of Olympic stakeholders were conducted and analysed to identify key meanings associated with the Olympic brand.

Through their transformational and social experiences of the Olympic brand, stakeholders co-create brand meanings based on Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect. However, at the same time, they offer their own interpretations and narratives related to competing meanings of spectacle, exclusion and deceit. Alternative brand touchpoints were identified, including blogs; fan and sports community forums; educational and academic sources; and historical sources and literature.

The brand manager must become a brand negotiator, facilitating multi-stakeholder co-creation experiences on a variety of online and offline engagement platforms, and exploring how alternative brand touchpoints can be used to access co-created brand meanings.

The study contributes to tourism branding literature by providing exploratory evidence of how brand meanings are co-created in the relatively under-researched multi-stakeholder sports mega-event context.

Social network analysis (SNA) is an under-utilised framework for research into festivals and events. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the history of SNA and explore its key concepts, in order that they might be applied to festivals and their environments.

Secondary material underpins the paper, primarily SNA literature, tourism studies research and festival industry publications.

Festival cities offer dynamic environments in which to investigate the workings of social networks. The importance of such networks has long been recognised within the industry, yet there is scant reflection of this in the event studies literature. Uses of SNA in tourism studies publications offer some precedents.

This paper emphasises the importance of relationships between people in a festival economy, complementing and building upon stakeholder analyses. A research method is proposed, suitable for application across a diverse range of festivals and events.

Sporting events are the core of sport tourism. However, when it comes to business models (BM) in the context of event sport tourism, that is, how value is created and delivered at events, there is an obvious lack of research. The purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of BMs in the specific context of event sport tourism.

Focusing on trail-running sport events which are rapidly growing in popularity, the paper assesses actual events relative to the existing conceptual BM framework by using the analytical possibilities of the multiple-case study and by applying the interview and observation methods.

The results indicate that the core logic of the examined event-related sport tourism practices is very similar, although there are some significant differences. In addition, this study raises questions concerning potential modifications within the applied framework. Primarily, these relate to the partner network being identified as a second-order theme and an independent BM category and, communication with stakeholders (primarily with competitors), as a key process within the event BM.

This paper focuses on under-researched topics in the context of tourism, that is, the BM concept in relation to event sport tourism in general and trail-running sport tourism in particular. The paper provides a better understanding of the BM concept as a whole, and trail-running event sport tourism suppliers could benefit from the research findings by potentially avoiding business mistakes.