Sporting Mega-Event Security in Hyperreality and its Consequences for Democratic Security Governance

ABSTRACT Within the sporting mega-events literature three key developments exist: 1. Security is performative and symbolic; 2. Security reactivates state authority and legitimacy in developing security responses; 3. Security measures have discernible security ‘legacies’. Taking a case study of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the resultant securitization of an existing residential community, this article uses Baudrillard’s concepts of hyperreality and simulation (1981) and the ‘virtual’ (2005) to examine the above developments in depth. It is shown that mega-event securitization operates as a form of hyperreal performativity. For local residents, this heightens perceptions of risk, increases demands for security, and legitimizes security measures which impact on democratic freedoms.