No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?!?!

The days of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” are over in a world where transparency has become so important to fans and sports organizations alike. For the most part, social media is a compliment to sports the sports industry and organizations, but don’t be fooled by social medias ability to fuel fan engagement and brand loyalty so easily. Social media can easily present challenges in the sports industry when it comes to legal action, athlete contracts, business management, structure and decisions.

With just a few clicks, 140 characters, a photo/video or a status update, a social media advocate can post a message to the digital universe and instantaneously impact a business or organization. This becomes ever so apparent when we look into the complicated and emotional world of sports and the social media platforms that influential professional athletes manage.

When it comes to business management structures, athlete’s social media accounts aren’t the only things that raise a brow; fans at the game can also cause sports organizations to be uneasy about the effortless, un-boundless reach that social media platforms have via smartphones and tablets. Its more and more common today that fans upload unauthorized live video content to the internet or social media accounts that they’ve captured from their seats at the stadium. With new shifts in technology, advertising and media rights could become a major issue when discussing where to draw the line on fan involvement and contract breaches. Public domain rights are going to be a hard thing to hash out with teams, stadiums, advertisers, media rights holders and fans while all in the same territory. The use of wireless devices like iPad’s and mobile phones have created complex sponsorship and media rights issues that could affect and are affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that leagues, sponsors and rights holders need to manage and work though now and in the future.

Sports organizations are increasingly recognizing social media’s ability to critically damage a valuable reputation. There’s a long list of cases in which damage was done to a sports organization’s reputation as a consequence of an athletes improper use of social media. To avoid liability, sports organizations should be proactive and implement strict policies that directly relate to and address these potentially damaging statements. A written social media policy along with expectations and guidelines should be included into an athletes and coaches (along with all employees) contracts; these policies should be strictly enforced and actively implemented on a consistent basis.

Social media crises can get even more complex when legal issues affect more then just the sorts organization itself. There are many things that a sports organization can do in order to be proactive in managing/handling these types of situations in the future. Organizations should waste no time in developing and implementing social media crisis management plans. These plans should be developed with the worst and most common situations to arise; be sure to implement a plan that’s suitable for almost any situation. Things to consider within this plan could and should be:

• -       Management of cross-brand internal and external communications
• -       Identify a trained spokesperson or people
• -       Crisis management teams (how many? and who should be involved?)
• -       Global crisis team vs. regional crisis team roles and actions.

Social media crisis are a real threat and this threat is amplified each and every day with the growing popularity of social media. Protecting and preparing your organization and other brands that could be directly affected through a meticulously developed crisis management plan helps to protect a brand’s lively hood and the online risks they face each and every day.