Falling stars : an examination of star athlete sexual assault cases and the public relations crisis response strategies utilized by their teams

摘要

With the longstanding popularity of American team sports having now leadus to a point where athletes are multi‐million dollar investments capable ofimpacting culture beyond the playing field, the teams and leagues that provide aplatform for these athletes to perform are more concerned with image and brandmanagement now more than ever. Consequently, star athletes have become anincreasingly vital part of building and sustaining league and team brands. The publicrelations methods utilized by these groups, especially the teams, when a star athletehas committed a PR blunder have varied over time. This content analysis uncoverswhether the public relations tactics used by teams when a star athlete is accused ofsexual assault has any impact on fan support. The study also seeks to find the publicrelations best practices that teams use in this situation, and whether or not there isany relationship in methods used by leagues and their corresponding teams andfront offices. Newspaper articles pertaining to the sexual assault accusations of KobeBryant, Ben Roethlisberger and Johan Santana were used in this analysis, with twomajor news publications from each athlete’s home city providing the content.