Sports events and the COVID-19 pandemic: assessing runners' intentions for future participation in running events – evidence from Greece

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented world health crisis that has spread to almost all countries of the world and has affected all the aspects of people’s lives. All the sports events – including the Olympic Games in Tokyo, for the first time in the history of the modern games - have been cancelled or postponed with no clear indication yet of how or when this will be resolved. The present study focused on Greek runners who participate in running events, both in the Greek territory and abroad, in order to explore the issues they are concerned about when deciding in which race they are going to participate in the COVID-19 era. A data set was created by 621 Greek respondents who answered the e -questionnaire of this study. Two research hypotheses were tested. Factor analysis (exploratory and confirmatory) was used to test the research hypotheses. The results confirmed that there are issues of the race destination and the race conditions that Greek runners are worrying due to the pandemic. The conclusions are useful mainly for practitioners and authorities that are involved in the organization of running races in order to organize safe running events that will attract runners and thus tourists and visitors to their areas.