The COVID-19 pandemic offers youth sport organizations the opportunity to anticipate consumer behaviour trends and proactively improve their program offerings for more satisfying experiences for consumers post-pandemic. This conceptual paper explores potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on changing youth sport and physical activity preferences and trends to inform sport and physical activity providers. Drawing from social ecology theory, assumptions for future trends for youth sport and physical activity are presented. Three trends for youth sport and physical activity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are predicted: (1) youths’ preferences from organized to non-organized contexts become amplified; (2) reasons for participating in sport or any physical activity shift for youth as well as parents/guardians; (3) consumers reconceptualize value expectations from youth sport and physical activity organizations. The proposed assumptions need to be tested in future research. It is anticipated that sport organizations can respond to changing trends and preferences by innovating in three areas: (1) programming, (2) marketing, and (3) resource management.

under the supervision of Dr. Marijke Taks. Georgia researches the relationship between passive consumption of sport and active sport participation, primarily among youth populations. She also researches the impacts of sport events on local communities.Marijke Taks is a professor in the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa. Dr.Taks' area of expertise is in socio-economic aspects of sport and leisure. Her current research focusses particularly on impacts, outcomes and leveraging of small and medium sized sport events, and their meaning for host communities. She also studies sport consumer behaviour of various groups in society. Mass participation and the "Sport for All" philosophy guide her research.

This study addresses a fundamental question underpinning demonstration effects: Can watching elite sport events inspire spectators to actively participate themselves? Our purpose was to identify intrapersonal and experiential mechanisms that might help explain a demonstration effect, particularly in the context of an international track cycling event. Spectators of the 2015 Pan American Games track cycling competitions (N=326) were screened to ensure they had never participated in the sport. Participants were then administered a survey assessing pre-event engagement, positive affect, trait inspiration, state inspiration, and intention to participate in track cycling after watching the competition. Data were examined using structural equation modelling. Pre-event engagement and state inspiration were found to have significant and direct influences on post-event participation intention. Positive affect was found to have no direct significant influence on participation intention. State inspiration significantly mediated relationships between pre-event engagement, positive affect, trait inspiration, and participation intention. Our study suggests previous knowledge of the sport, spectators’ personalities, and spectator experiences that evoke intense feelings of being inspired while immersed in the event are salient mechanisms involved in decisions to try a new sport on display. To leverage potential demonstration effects, we suggest sport managers engage ticket holders in advance of novel sport events to increase knowledge about the sport, and present post-event program information during an event to capitalize on heightened states of inspiration.

Research question: Can evidence of trickle-down-effects be observed among youth living in the hometowns of Canadian athletes that competed and/or won medals at the London 2012 Olympic Games?Research methods: Leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) rates of male and female youth were extracted from the Canadian Community Health Survey (n > 1,000,000) for 110 health regions during the pre-Olympic (2009/2010), Olympic (2011/2012), and post-Olympic (2013/2014) year periods. The health regions were treated as panel units and, beyond Canadian athletes and medallists, the panel data analysis incorporated population size and previous Olympic hosting as control variables in the model. Results and Findings:The panel analysis revealed that the number of Canadian athletes representing youths' hometowns at the London 2012 Olympic Games was negatively associated with LTPA rates when considering the full sample of youth, and male youth in particular. Interestingly however, winning medals (of any colour) was positively associated with hometown LTPA rates among the full sample of youth and male youth. Hometown population size was negatively associated with LTPA rates for the full sample of youth and female youth specifically. Winning a gold medal and hosting previous Olympic/Paralympic Games were not significantly associated with hometown LTPA rates when considering the full sample of youth or male and female youth separately.Implications: Our study demonstrates a need for researchers and sport managers to consider the spatial reach and scope of trick-down-effects beyond that which can occur within a host nation. These effects have the potential to be a global phenomenon.

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