Football’s lost reputation
October 11th, 2012 by Mark Perry
It seems every day that football’s reputation is afflicted by one controversy or other – tweeting, accusations of racism, diving and even the England manager discussing team selection to strangers on the tube.
While, on one hand, the clubs seem to be all-controlling in their dealings with the media by limiting access to players and managers or even banning journalists from press conferences because of something they may have written, there are occasions when it seems that issues are not closed down.
As an industry which is under the media spotlight 24 hours a day, seven days a week I cannot help but feel that the sport is in need of some reputation management.
Liverpool belatedly admitted earlier this year that their handling of the ‘Luis Suarez affair’ was not as effective as it could have been and there has been relative silence from Chelsea in response to last week’s infamous Ashley Cole tweet about his thoughts on the FA.
If a football club was a corporation that was in crisis management mode there would be calls for immediate action. It just seems that in football things are left to fester while there is a chipping away of the hard-won club brand.
It may be time for clubs to see themselves just as any other company would and manage their reputation with their different stakeholders and ensure that any indiscretions of their employees – the players – don’t cause long time damage.
About Mark Perry
Mark has more than 25 years’ experience in PR and corporate communications. He is a founding director of B2B consultancy Melville PR.
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Hollie Says:
To be honest, I’m surprised clubs haven’t taken on a more crisis management aspect yet. I think more and more people are seeing it’s not just down to the individuals but the clubs too. With any company, if an employee were to do something pretty bad in their professional or personal life, it wouldn’t look great for them either.
Chris Says:
I have to agree with Hollie, there is always one crisis or another in the world of football. There are a lot of big egos to contend with too, so some form of crisis management would definitely help to keep the beautiful game firmly on the back of newspapers rather than the front.