Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2010 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.3, (International University of Applied Sciences), course: Tourism Policy & Planning, language: English, abstract: This paper analyzes and evaluates the academic research on leveraging policies concerning mega sports events [MSE] such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup specifically. Hence, firstly an overall framework is set by defining and categorizing mega events in general before interrelating them to the concept of sport events tourism. Secondly, the author discusses the impacts and related issues of MSEs before highlighting best practices of realized event legacies discussed within the academic literature. The research paper concludes with a summary of the previous discussion into a number of definite 'lessons learned'. The latter corresponds with the overall aim of this research paper as it tries to extract the operational strategies successfully applied in the context of MSE legacy from the available academic literature to support tourism policy makers.