Al-Hikmah University Journal

Mass participation in sport events is the involvement of many people in different forms of sporting and physical activities irrespective age, gender, international or local athleticism, and social status. An example is marathon and half marathon races which are now increasingly being organized by various states in Nigeria. Such events require traveling from one destination to the other by both the participants and the spectators. Tourism is said to be a process of traveling to and staying in a different environment for leisure, business and other purposes and not more than one consecutive year. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of mass participation in sport events on the development of tourism in Nigeria with regards to respondents’ gender. Survey and ex-post facto designs were used. A self developed questionnaire was validated and has reliability co-efficient .87. Six hundred and twenty two copies of the instrument and were administered to staff members of sport councils/commissions and those of tourism boards in the twelve sampled states across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria. Six hundred and twenty one copies of the instrument were retrieved. Data were analyzed descriptively using frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviation, and inferentially using  Mann Whitney U test  in order  to  provide   answers to research questions and to test the hypotheses respectively. The results showed that; there is no significant difference in the respondents’ opinions on the influence of mass participation in sport events on the development of tourism in Nigeria based on their gender  (p calculated > 0.05 at Z 0.385). Based on the major findings, it was recommended among others that; the government of Nigeria especially ministries department and agencies in both sports and tourism sectors at various levels should encourage the mass participation of people in sporting events through subsidizing transports fares tickets and accommodation.