As most of the sports media (and the national mainstream media for some reason) focused on the recent embarrassing sex scandal involving ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips and his subsequent termination from his network; an interesting side story has developed involving Deadspin and the practice of public relations.
A.J. Daulerio, Deadspin’s co-creator and editor, announced last week that because an ESPN public relations representative had lied to him and cost him the opportunity to scoop other major sports media outlets on a big story, he was going to embarrass the network and its brand by posting every rumor and innuendo about [...]

It is a common theme in this blog that anticipating public relations issues and acting before the crisis occurs is an extremely important strategy and a necessary action for any sports organization.
As I had quoted in a previous post, “The best offense is a good defense” (or is it the other way around?).
There is a potential PR crisis slowly creeping up on the NHL that if not dealt with soon things could get very ugly for the league and its commissioner, Gary Bettman.
Since the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, the NHL has gone on a two-week hiatus during [...]

One of the oldest clichés in sports is, “The best offense is a good defense.” And that principle certainly applies to successful strategies in sports public relations.
The NBA and commissioner David Stern showed us an example last week of a strong PR defense with a preemptive strike intended to squash potential PR damage regarding the current referee lockout.
With training camps opening up and no end in sight to the current labor issues, the NBA is using replacement refs for preseason and possibly regular season games. Of the 62 replacement refs hired, more than half are from the NBA’s Development League [...]