Pro Athletes Beware: Sleaze Media Is After You!
One of the most difficult tasks as a sports public relations practitioner today is convincing professional athletes that they need someone to manage their PR and publicity-related interests. The same way a pro athlete may retain a lawyer, an accountant, an agent, a trainer or a business manager; today’s emerging technology has altered the sports industry to the point where athletes must have an expert, working on their behalf, monitoring the media and overseeing how their name and image is being presented to the public.
There are, of course, different levels of celebrity that pro athletes reach. But from the mega superstar ranks of LeBron James and Tigers Woods all the way down to third-string rookies on last place MLS and WNBA teams, all pro athletes, whether they’re aware or not, are fair game and potential fodder for the thousands of media outlets (much of them sleaze media) competing for salacious content.
And the list of those outlets gunning for athletes continues to grow as it was reported earlier this week that TMZ, the entertainment and gossip Web site and television show, has purchased the domain name TMZSports.com and will be launching a sports-specific site in the near future.
TMZSports.com will not be the first (or last) Web site or media outlet dedicated to embarrassing athletes. But if the new Web site is anything like its parent site, TMZSports.com will be more relentless in capturing revealing and humiliating videos, pictures and stories of athletes than all other media sources before it.
Since its launch on the Web in 2005 and TV airwaves in 2007, TMZ has been the leader in tracking and breaking news about celebrity deaths, arrests, break ups, divorces, lawsuits, fights and just about everything else that’s personal and private in the lives of famous people.
And now that the paparazzi-style media giant is creating a special division to focus specifically on sports, pro and possibly amateur athletes, of all levels, will become even bigger targets of media attacks. TMZ is not going to create a sports spinoff and not find the necessary content.
And not only are more and more media outlets dedicated to proactively “sniffing out” celebrity and athlete scandals but these outlets are drastically extending the shelf life of the stories.
It’s not enough to report the initial news and facts of, say, a DWI arrest or a compromising photo. These outlets post daily updates on any story and dig up the smallest bits of information in order to fill space and provide as much content as possible.
So for those athletes who feel they don’t need a PR rep or that their agent or manager can handle their PR needs…beware. Wise up and secure a PR expert to monitor, anticipate and spin any negative publicity that may lurking around the corner.
[...] A sports P.R. look at TMZ Sports. – Sports P.R. 101 [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 1:08 am