MEDIA MANAGEMENT FOR SPORT

SP6019

Critical Literature Review

&
Press-release

Prepared by:
Lee Man Cho, Vergil
(UNN:18045557; HKU Space: 10600466)
Word counts (A)2,243 words; (B)271 words
 Table of Content
Introduction 4

Definition of Crisis 5

Nicholson’s argument 7

Management of communication and the characteristics 7

• Internal Communication 7

• External Communication 8

Theories and practice with different sports events 10

Summary 3

Crisis brief 5

A respond on accusation of sexual harassment during athlete trainings 6

Reference 7

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Part A
LITERATURE 2 - Crisis Management

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 Introduction
Everyday when you wake up surfing the Internet with you cell
phone, no matter on Instagram or Facebook, it is not hard to
discover sport news are ubiquitous. Thanks to technology, sport
news spread like wildfire not only by normal media arenas like
newspaper, radio or television. However, there can be both good or
bad news, such as corruption, doping of athletes or match mixing,
which can easily ruin athlete’s career and do heavy damages to an
organisation. To protect every stakeholders interest and maintain
a good image of organisation, Crisis media management becomes an
important practice to every sports organisation.
Nicholson, writer of Sport and the media: Managing the nexus,
points out that crisis management is a mindset and process that,
on a daily basis, drives a company’s decisions and actions.
(Nicholson, 2015).
As such, this study will define the nature of crisis from
various academic studies, exploring crisis management within
sports industry and the importances and significants of
communication management management between mass media and public
in various events of crisis.

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 Definition of Crisis
The term crisis is often used to discuss an event occurs that
have negative impact to an organisation or an individuals. The
event might be caused by organisation or individual itself, vice
versa.
In academic, there are serval definition about what crisis
is. Delatte (2003) defines crisis as a situation that will affect
normal business operations, would brings uncertainties and
negative outcome. Kreps (1996) identifies crisis is an incident
that harms organisation in emergency situation that could cause
the organisation irreparable damage. Nichloson (2015) states that
crisis is a problem that organisation or individual is
experiencing and it has potential to cause a negative impact.
Seeger (2002) describes crisis is a distinct, unforeseen and non-
routine instance or series of instances which generate high levels
of uncertainty and threat to an organisation’s high priority
goals.
In short, the term crises typically relate to an occurrence
that happens outside the control of a sport club. Although there
are some arguments about the difference between crisis and
scandal. But the nature between crises and scandal are mostly the
same, deal damages to public relation of organisation or sport
club. Whether the incident is a crisis or scandal that affect
public image, and in some instances bring the reputations of
individuals and organisation to the depth of bad publicity that
cannot be revoked .
In this information age, information travels around the world
in the blink of an eye. Crises is a front-page material to mass
media. How to respond to crisis become a challenge to every
organisation. Hence, crisis management is a crucial to
organisational success. Case 1 shows an example that a crisis
happened in sport industry and a failure of crisis management.

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Case 1 Jacksonville Mass Shooting
A mass shooting happened during a eSports tournament in

Jacksonville, United State on 26th August, 2018. The live-

steaming had suddenly charge to chaotic. There are two people had
been killed and eleven people were injured. One for more,
Jacksonville was already occurred from another deadly shooting
over the same week. One person was killed and two others were
injured in a shooting after a high school football game on few
days before. Some of eSports player and eSports platforms offered
their condolences to this tragedy. But the host organisation have
not leave any comment so far. (The New York Times, 2018)

The shooting crisis in case 1 indicated the organiser was

underprepared about such large-scale crisis and apparently the
organiser paid serious price for it. Whether it is their
reputation or financial aspect. The organiser even did not
communicate with media or public in any way. The result of this
instance zoom out was the cause of the organiser’s lack of
management in venue security as well as lack of communication
management. After the shooting crisis happened, the eSports
participants became scared of watching or participating in their
events or tournament. The shooting crisis arouse the attention
within sports industry, “Whether sports crisis management can
effectively handle terroristic crises?” (Knight, 2019; Fletcher,
2010)

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 Nicholson’s argument
Nicholson suggested that Crisis Management has five stages
understanding the place of crisis media management. The five
stages are: signal detection; preparation and prevention;
containment and damage limitation; recovery and learning. All of
five stages are essential parts of an organisation’s media
planning. The crisis media management is being prepared for
something that may never happen, as well as responding no margin
or doubt and effectively to something that just happened. Most
importantly, Nicholson argues that
‘CRISIS MANAGEMENT IS A MINDSET AND PROCESS THAT, ON A DAILY
BASIS, DRIVES A COMPANY’S DECISIONS AND ACTIONS’ (NICHOLSON, 2015)
In his point of view, crisis management is an attitude held
by every individuals in the organisation. Every individuals in the
organisation have a commitment that how to prepare, prevent and
react when different type of crisis happened. For instance,
organisation should have a standard procedure for directing
manager to handle crisis and how to recover and learning for the
crisis. On a daily basis, keeping a good relationship with media
and maintaining a good image as general public excepted are
essential of crisis management.

Management of communication and the characteristics

As mentioned in previous section, handling crisis has divided
into five stages: detection, prevention and preparation,
containment, recovery and learning. (Pearson, 1993). In every
single stage, communication is a crucial element that can even be
a tool to interpret whether they are right messages or orders.
Communication can be classified into internal and external
communication. They are in order to enhance the image of
organisation and minimise the damage from the negative occurrence
(Fearn-Banks, 1994).
• Internal Communication
When controlling the internal communication in crisis, it is
important to ensure official communication channel are clear and
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single lined, as a result, it can avoid phenomenon of mixed
confusing information. For instance, each level of management
assign a manager to deliver information to their group of people.
Organisation should establish a written communicate procedure in
order to help locating the type of crisis and instructing the
partitioner to handle crisis property. When a crisis occurs, the
partitioner can quickly identify the type of crisis and choose
actions to protect stakeholders from any damage no matter in
physical or psychological. Furthermore, the uncertainty of a
crisis will stress stakeholders, stakeholders will need
information about what had happened and prevention to the similar
crisis happen in the future. (Coombs, 2007)
As media tends to be interested in misconduct of ‘public
face’, especially athletes. Sport organisations are suggested to
do prevention, education, may be take control, if necessary,
athletes behaviour to prevent such crisis to occur.
• External Communication
In terms of external communication, organisation should grant
legitimacy dependent upon the approval of each category of public.
Metzler defines four categories of public that organisation should
care about, which are (1). enabling public(controlling resources
of authority); (2).functional public(media or press);
(3).normative public(fans) and (4).diffused public (general
public). (Metzler, 2001)
Academicians suggested organisations should respond to a crisis
with developing and sustaining an open and accurate communication
channel with the press. (Seeger, 1998) and respond the crisis as
soon as possible. (Adams, 2000)
An organisation is credible and open to media which develops
better results in public relation, brand image management,
relationship marketing and human resources management. (Rensbury,
2008). There are some findings proving that an organisation that
is credible can positively affect fan’s behavioural intentions,
(Hwang, 2017). Also when organisation have a strong, well-

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developed relationships with public, will suffer fewer negative
damage. (Fearn-Banks, 1996)
Furthermore, organisation are suggested to assign an
appropriate person to represent it as the spokesman. A
knowledgeable spokesman addresses the media is better than
delivering a message from athlete or some individual himself/
herself, who does not understand the whole situation.
Spokesman can gather all information in his/her hands and responds
media’s questions immediately. Nevertheless a quick respond to
media in a fast-developing crisis is critical action, because
misinformation and lack of communication can cause the media to
expand or make up stories in a negative direction by using the
information from third-party source.

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 Theories and practice with different sports events
Case 2 Nike ‘Shoegate’
On Wednesday, February 20, 2019, Zion Williamson, a basketball
player of Basketball team, Duke in United State, who are
expected to be the top pick of N.B.A. draft on 2019, appeared
to twist his left foot as his Nike PG 2.5 sneaker fell apart
with the sole literally bursting open at the seam during the
most anticipated college basketball games of the season.
(Taylor, 2019)
The sportswear manufacturer, Nike, which outfits Duke’s teams
and provided Zion’s PG 2.5 sneaker said in a statement
“WE ARE OBVIOUSLY CONCERNED AND WANT TO WISH ZION A
SPEEDY RECOVERY. THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF OUR
PRODUCTS ARE OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE. WHILE THIS IS AN
ISOLATED OCCURRENCE, WE ARE WORKING TO IDENTIFY THE
ISSUE.”(MARC, 2019)
The day after the incident, Nike’s stock closed down US$0.89 at
$83.95, for about 1 billion drop in market value.
The crisis started to flame out Nike, when the media revealed
several instances of Nike’s shoe malfunctioning. Nike also
became the target of ridicule on media labelling the issue as
‘Shoegate’. (Marc, 2019)

As of now, the only significant negative impact has been Nike

experiencing 1.1% drop of stock price. Nike’s stock price has
raised to $89.91 as in April, 2020, fourteen months later. (Rob,
2019) Nike is assumed to be recovered from Shoegate. Regarding to
external communication, Nike immediately showed concern and care
by looking into this incident with one official statement. Nike’s
official statement was solemn, focused on Zion and made it clearly
that they have paid close attention to the incident, and apologia
it to be an isolated occurrence. Although, some people on social
media have questioned about the shoes’ quality. Nike answered as

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same as their official statement to consist the unity of the
story:
“THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF OUR PRODUCTS ARE OF UTMOST
IMPORTANCE. WHILE THIS IS AN ISOLATED OCCURRENCE, WE ARE
WORKING TO IDENTIFY THE ISSUE.” (TAYLOR, 2019)
In oder to protect Nike’s brand image, Nike chose to respond
the incident is an isolated occurrence in adoption of Benoit’s
five image restoration, ‘denial’, that simply denying
responsibility for an event or shifting the blame outside the
boundaries of the organisation. Organisations can evade
responsibility for a crisis by claiming that they had an accident.
(Benoit, 1995) instead of pull the shoes out from shelves and
confess their shoes have a quality problem.

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Case 3 Chinese Olympic Swimmer Gets 8-Year Doping Ban
A Chinese Olympic Swimmer, Sun Yang, is found guilty of a
doping offence and scansion with an 8-year period of
ineligibility announced by The Court of Arbitration for Sport
on February 28, 2020, gives an end to controversy doping
scandal for Sun Yang.
Sun Yang, A three-time Olympic gold medalist, 11 world
championship golds, is second only to the legendary Unite State
swimmer Michael Phelps, who refused to complete a doping text
carry out by World Anti-Doping Agency on September 4, 2018.
Before the court hearing, Sun Yang insist he is innocence,
keeping update his social media for telling himself innocence
and blaming translation disaster in the courting hearing.
"I am shocked and angry -- I don't understand," the swimmer
wrote in a post on the Chinese social media platform. "I firmly
believe my innocence and that truth will prevail over lies.”
Sun Yang wrote in his social media.
Firstly, Media in China show their support to their proudest
sport star, Unfortunately, after the announcement the court
hearing, the media starts to comment negative.

Before the court hearing, Sun Yang has been controversial

discussed in serval misconducted events. In 2013, Sun Yang has
been kept in detection for a week and fined 2,000 yuan for driving
without a licence. Local media were incredulous at his explanation
that he had a weak knowledge of the law. Few months before, the
media have been focusing on the relationship between Sun Yang and
other swimmer in World Aquatics Championships on July 2019,
Australian swimmer Mack Horton refused to share the podium with
Sun Yang after the 400m freestyle. Two days after, an ugly scenes
have been captured by media, ‘You’re a loser, I’m a winner’ Sun
Yang shouting at British swimmer Duncan Scott. Building a positive
image on Sun Yang has been a difficult task for Chinese Swimming
Association.
 Although the relationship between Chinese Swimming
Association and state run media, such as the Beijing Times, Global
Times, are good. However, the athletes’ behaviour and his
misconduct is a critical issue management in prevention of crises,
even though there is good communication with mass media, the
internal one should have been communication well. China bundled
Sun Yang with an image of sporting hero when he took a champion in
olympic. Such big name must come with gigantic responsibilities
and public expectations. General public love to raise their
eyebrows at famous sport stars and high standard human being like
a saint.
To maintain or restore the image of athletes, the athletes
must be careful to get involve other scandal, unfortunately, Sun
Yang seems to fail this practice. When the media abandoned and
stopped to standup and support him in the scandal, it is hard to
repair a good image. Furthermore, when the crisis or scandal
happens as respected to previous discussion, a spokesman should
respond to the media rather than the athlete himself. Clearly,
this practice have not been done in this case. Despite losing his
chance to participate the next Olympics, Sun Yang might lose
sponsorship during his misconducts.

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 Summary
Management crisis is not an easy task for every industry.
Especially in sport industry, the complicated environment involved
numerous stakeholders during the crisis. In order to practice a
good crisis management, communicate with different stakeholders
and external parties is critical. In relation to communication in
crisis, there are four specific focus in this study:(1)Prevention
and preparation; (2) Sustain an open and accurate communication
channel; (3) Spokesman and (4) Reaction time of responding. Case
studies analyses of response of sport club is different with
theory. To establish a good crisis management, sport organisations
are suggested to maintain a good relationship with media,
constraint athletes behaviour to prevent whether of scandal or
crisis occur.

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Part B
Press-release

4
 Crisis brief
Hong Kong hurdling champion Vera Lui Lai-yiu publish a post
on her social media ‘Facebook’ page, claiming that an athletics
coach sexually assaulted her during a massage at his home when she
was thirteen years old. The post came along with a photo of her
holding a paper on “#MeToo” was draw, with her initials “LLY”
below, in support of a growing international hashtag campaign
agains sexual assaulting. Hong Kong Sports Institute is going to
issue a press-release to respond to this incident, and show
concerns and further actions in handling sexual abuse in order to
ease pubic attention about sexual abuse in sport industry.

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Vergil Lee FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 20/04/2020
Hong Kong Sports Institute,
25 Yuen Wo Road,
Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong
vergil@hksi.com

A respond on accusation of sexual harassment during athlete trainings

Recently, one of our athletic coach is being accused to have

committed sexually harassment, during a sport massage section he
performed to a female athlete in his apartment ten years ago. We
are sincerely giving our concerns and care about those involved in
this incident. As this is a very serious accusation, we have
immediately contacted both parties and suggested the athlete to
report this incident to the police. At this stage, there is no
evidence for the case.
In our record, the coach is an honest, professional,
respectful person who has kept clean record, we have never
received any complains towards his work ethnics. Yet, we would put
our best effort in helping relative departments in investigation.
“We have zero tolerance to sexual harassment happen in our
institute, whether physical, verbal, textual or electronic
messages that related to sexual harassment.” Dr Lam Tai-fai SBS
JP, Chairman of Hong Kong Sports Institue. We reserve the right to
pursue the law if any parties is against the law.
As guided by the Government’s current policy direction, we
have established a Staff Code of Ethics in order to prevent sexual
harassment happen in workplace. Furthermore, we have repeatedly
provide training and briefing session to our athletes and stall to
improving the knowledge about preventing such occurrences. We have
updated our latest prevention strategies and code of conduct on
our website. We are sure that our staff have well-trained,
integrated and respect different kind of people.
Since the case is now being investigated. Currently, we will
not have further comments on it.

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