The first National Sports and Recreation Festival was held in Yamanashi Prefecture as a four-day event in 1988 to provide an opportunity for all adult generations.　At this festival, 14,000 participants from all of 47 prefectures took part in the formal sport event.　Approximately 450 million yen were spent in the event.　Most of the participants spent 40,000 to 90,000 yen, while half of the budget cost was provided by their prefectural governments.　Since then, the annual event has been held in different prefectures with 15 formal sport programs.　Those formal sport are as follows: 1)ground golf (mini golf), 2)gateball, 3)soccer, 4)soft volleyball, 5)softball, 6)large ball table tennis, 7)target bird golf, 8)tug of war, 9)tennis, 10)soft tennis, 11)bound tennis (a deck tennis type), 12)badminton, 13)ten pin bowling, 14)track and field, and 1 5)indiaca.

　The National Health and Welfare Festival, also known as Nenrinpic (Nenrin means annual ring of tree), started in 1988, organized by MHLW. The purpose of Nenrinpic is to encourage active and healthy lifestyle for the elderly through participation in the event.　The first Nenrinpic was held in Hyogo Prefecture with approximately 10,000 participants from all of 47 prefectures in Japan.　Approximately 500 million yen were spent in this event.

　The number of tourists after the event of the year in Yamanashi has increased by 3.58 million people in comparison with the number of tourists to 3.38 million in the previous year.　It should be noted that SfA events can attract sport tourists and have a potential of repeaters to the place of the event.　The participants of SfA event have a unique characteristic as tourists, traveling around and sightseeing spots where the event is held.　It is apparent that these sport tourists in SfA events make a significant economic impact on the local tourism and economy.

　The number of mass sport events aiming at the promotion of SfA has been increasing specifically in local communities (special events for mass participation will be presented in later section).　Influenced by the success of the two national SfA events mentioned above, regional and local sport associations, mainly new types of sport and games, became institutionalized and introduced into the regional and local sport events.　Another important reason of the increase of local events is the fact that mass sport events have a possibility to enhance community development as well as the local economy.

　Due to the increasing number of similar types of sport events in local communities, it became difficult to maintain or increase the number of participants in the event.　Therefore, for successful sport events it is important to attract repeaters continuously Repeaters in sport events can be defined as participants who take part in the event more than twice or continually.　Based on the questionnaire surveys and field works of SfA events, a model which indicates programmatic and related variables affecting repeaters to mass sport events can be shown in Figure 2.

　The model includes such negative variables as impolite attitude of staff, time inconvenience, long ceremony; lack of publicity, inconvenient toilets, poor service at hotel, and lack of tourism information.　As positive variables, incentives and goods, convenient accessibility, safety and amenities, volunteers'hospitality, social programs, special service for family and peers.　Food and drink service are identified to increase the number of repeaters.　The management and marketing components of SfA events are often under emphasized.　Consequently; negative variables often outweigh the positive variables affecting sustained participants' interest and enthusiasm.　Such imbalance is likely to lead to poor adherence and a decline in participation in sports event.