Identifying the social impacts of sport tourism events is useful for the implementation of planning and management policies. By acknowledging the need to undertake research on the impacts of sport tourism events in third world economies, this paper aims to identify the social impacts of the 2011 Pan American Games as perceived by a host community in Mexico. A total of 384 questionnaires were administered to local residents in 2010. Informants identified that the sport-ing event will have positive impacts such as investment, new jobs, commercial opportunities, infrastructure improvement and the tourism promotion of the city. However, locals also ac-knowledged that traffic congestion, crowding and the increase of trash, noise and goods and services prices will come as a consequence of hosting the event. This paper ends by presenting theoretical and practical implications of the event impacts.