Studying sports event governance: Meet new professor Milena Parent

Milena Parent joined Telfer in July as a Full Professor of Management. She holds a PhD from the University of Alberta. In addition to teaching, Parent is director of the MEMOS (Executive Masters in Sport Organisation Management) English program, serves on the board of the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute, and is a member of the Canadian Sport Policy’s Policy Monitoring and Implementation Work Group. We interviewed her to learn more about her research interests in sports events management and governance.

Why did you choose to study sports management? Any personal motivation behind your interest in this area? 

During my master’s program, I did an internship with the 2001 Jeux de la Francophonie, which was held in our region. At the time, I had only been in a management program for eight months. Prior to that, I had done a BSc in physiology and started a master's in cellular and molecular medicine!  Faced with the challenge of not finding information on “how to do” a sport event, I became captivated by the field. I also figured that if I were to do any more in the future, I should study them to not make the same mistakes twice. I approached a well-known professor in sport management, who noted the scarcity of research in this area and invited me to pursue a PhD to help advance the field. The rest, as they say, is history.

How does your PhD training inform your current research program?  

My PhD training opened my eyes to the various ways you could study organizations and management. Through my doctoral work, I laid the foundation for how to study sport events from a management perspective, by understanding who the organizing committee is, who the stakeholders are, what they want, and how the organizing committee deals with all these various — and often conflicting— needs.  To this day, I still use this information as the starting point for my research on sport event governance. I also use the stakeholder network perspective for my broader research on the governance of the sport system and its various organizations.

Do you have any new research highlights to share? Any interesting publications in the pipeline that you’re excited about? 

Since completing my PhD, the field of sport event management has significantly evolved, now boasting a robust body of research. My role as the Sport Events Section editor for Routledge Resources Online (encyclopedia)—Sport Studies reflects this advancement. I also published an article that explores the state of play in event management research. 

These recent contributions highlight how the field has matured and been refined over the past two decades, addressing topics such as sport event governance, hosting policies, the legacies sports events can derive if planned properly, economic and sustainability concerns, and the integration of emerging technologies.

How can your research influence business communities in Canada? 

Sport events serve as a vehicle for various stakeholders, including the business community, to derive a range of desired outcomes and benefits, extending beyond the frequently cited economic impact. Hosting major sport events offers opportunities to leverage different types of legacies. However, this leveraging must be approached with conscious and strategic planning by the business community, ideally before the event bid is finalized. Otherwise, as some of my research has shown, there is a risk that the business community may be sidelined and left behind.