Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

It seems that no matter what corner of the globe you travel to, sports stars always court controversy. Whether it’s Paulo Di Canio giving facist salutes to Lazio fans in Italian Soccer, Dublin and Tyrone GAA stars fighting on the pitch or Olympic athletes becoming embroiled in another doping scandal.

Some people have argued that the sporting world needs better PR, is the answer to their problems even simpler - self-regulation? Instead of helping sports stars in times of scandal, wouldn’t each industry be better off investing more money into initiatives to prevent those scandals from happening in the first place.

Let me walk you through a few examples, before highlighting the fact that PR still has a role in the sports world.

Racism is a big problem in Soccer at the moment, especially in the Spanish, italian and Eastern European leagues. Between Paulo Di Canio giving facist salutes on the pitch and players being racially abused by their own fans, it’s a problem that has to be stomped out sooner rather than later. Unfortunately though, after each incident there is a lot of talk but little action. Clubs like Getafe in La Liga have responded with cheap publicity stunts, saying that their players would wear boot polish during matches. While it might be a meaningful gesture, FIFA and UEFA would be better to order referees to stop matches if racial chanting was a problem. If it persisted, clubs could be forced to play matches behind closed doors. Soon enough, clubs would police their fans to stop it from happening, otherwise they would risk losing out on vital revenues. Such a policy would show that Soccer authorities were serious about showing racism the red card and get them lots of positive coverage.

Violence seems to be accepted in Gaelic Sports in ireland today. The GAA have lifted the suspensions initially imposed on Dublin and Tyrone players, despite the fact that the brawls that erupted during the match were described in the press as a riot. If the GAA wanted to be seen to be putting an end to such violence, surely heavy suspensions should have been handed out?

WADA, the world sporting doping agency, is also another organisation that is good at talking the talk, but doesn’t seem to walk the walk. For example, when Rio Ferdinand, the Manchester United soccer player, was banned for missing a drugs test, he was made a scapegoat and handed a heavy ban. There was lots of talk about drug testing in various sports across the globe and Dick Pound, the Wada spokeperson, built up a nice media profile for himself. However, other Soccer players who tested positive for banned substances at the same time only received light suspensions relative to Ferdinand, thus making a joke out of the whole affair.

In each of these three instances, it can be seen that if each of the relevant organisations took real action against all of the culprits in a fair and equal fashion, they would have improved the reputation of each of the sports. You don’t need a PR consultant to tell you that. Instead of genuinely engaging with their audiences though, they choose to engage in a serious of publicity stunts instead. Each of these problems will raise its ugly head again in the future, and will no doubt be met with the same half hearted response.

All that being said, PR has a role in the sports world, even in times of scandal. A good example of that is the recent troubles of Sol Campbell. Unfortunately I can’t remember the newspaper that highlighted how PR could have helped him through his personal problems, but I’ll retell the example anyway. Campbell, an English soccer player, suffered a dip in form and was dropped by his manager, Arsene Wenger, who said that the player had some ‘personal problems.’ Campbell had been in the tabloids before and this opened the floodgates. The player’s representatives didn’t respond quickly and instead let a communications vacuum develop which led to boundless speculation about his private life. If his PR consultant had been on the ball, he could have put a stop to the speculation following Wenger’s comments very quickly and created an environment to help him back from his personal problems quicker. So it can be seen that even when the tabloids get their teeth in, PR still has a role to play in the sports world.

While Public Relations is essential to help a better communications process develop, the sports world needs to act tough on itself if it really wants to improve its image. With money being flung at stars, testosterone building up on the pitch and the temptation of drugs lurking around every corner in order to shave one hundredth of a second off a time, the sporting world is always going to be in need of communications advice. It could do well by policing itself rather than having to explain its problems every time that happens though.

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