Public Relations

The increase in sport's professionalism has coincided with the global embrace of celebrity culture and the two – money and celebrity – make a potent mix. And that is where PR comes in. Players – and managers and coaches – are public figures with profiles to match. No longer can a 19-year-old footballer get drunk on holiday. He's a commodity to be protected, a product whose public face cannot be dirtied. He needs gatekeepers to protect his image. Just as he needs a coach to tell him how to kick the ball, he needs a PR manager to tell him how to answer those all-important post-match questions. What does all this mean for the working sports journalist? This chapter looks at how the battleground for information is increasingly dominated by public-relations specialists.