An ICM poll suggests that 47% of the British public do not believe John Terry should have been axed as England captain. Just digest that statistic for a second. Almost half of the surveyed public disagree with Fabio Capello’s decision to remove John Terry’s England captaincy in light of alleged extra-marital activities with his team-mate’s former girlfriend. So why on Earth have the red-tops been so keen to make a fuss about Terry’s off-pitch antics over the last week or so if nearly half of us seemingly don’t think it action-worthy? Simple – it sells papers. Everyone loves a scandal.
The world of football is littered with bad news stories and assuming there is a very active and professional PR machine running at full steam behind the scenes, then the stories we hear about must be just the tip of the iceberg. So when a scandal breaks it must be a biggie. The knives have certainly been out for John Terry but it seems like his demotion from the Captain’s perch has been more a case of who he did rather than what he did.
Football is not the only sport to hit the front pages for the wrong reasons. F1, rugby, golf, swimming, there is hardly a sporting boat that has been unrocked by the meddling hand of shame but each for very understandable reasons and with different outcomes.
The start of the Six Nations championship last weekend proves that rugby is as popular as ever before, but just six months ago the sport made headlines for the wrong reasons after Harlequins full back Tom Williams used a blood capsule to fake an injury in order to get substituted at the request of Quins Director of Rugby Dean Richards. The resultant media backlash from the story was to be expected because of the sheer incredulity of what the team’s management had tried to do. Even the most seasoned of Pro’s would find that story difficult to sugar-coat.
There are times when PR spin are just not appropriate for the situation. This month’s Sport Business magazine carries an interesting feature on the power of Twitter in relation to athlete crisis management. Peter Janes, MD of Sportpost.com, says that American swimming sensation Michael Phelps overcame some of the negativity surrounding his drug allegations at the start of 2009 by apologising to fans on his Twitter site. Janes correctly observes that it is all about transparency and connecting to the fan base.
Tiger Woods did the exact opposite when stories of his marital indiscretions started coming to light – he just vanished. Far from connecting with his massive global supporters, Woods did a bunk. The reason for that scandal being diffused so widely was because it was just so out of the blue and apparently out of character. Golf is hardly known for its seedy reputation, so when the Tiger Woods bombshells appeared and continued and carried on and on and on, the entire modern era of golf was thrust into the spotlight. After all, the entire modern age of golf has hinged on Woods in much the same was as motorcycle racing is intrinsically linked to Valentino Rossi and darts to Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor, so Tiger-gate sent shockwaves down the fairway. But while Tiger Woods faces an uphill battle to restore his reputation, his return to the stage, whenever that may be, will be a guaranteed PR win for golf as a sport.
Formula 1 is a sport where internal politicking and scandal have become part and parcel of its offering and a large contributory factor to its prolonged presence in the tabloids and broadsheets. The Renault/Flavio Briatore/Pat Symonds/Nelson Piquet Jr race-fix story of 2009 was a case in point. Of course it was outrageous and abhorrent and put Formula 1 under an ugly spotlight, but from the public’s point of view it seems that Formula 1 scandals induce shock but little in the way of surprise. The return of Michael Schumacher, as I wrote here just a couple of weeks ago, has done little to abate talk of on-track shenanigans in the media, but that is the sort of story that feeds the public’s unhealthy and insatiable appetite for scandal.
Scandals will always be part of sport. Sometimes they might even be good coverage for the sport in question. The one thing that seems universal is that they will never be good for the athletes who become embroiled in them.
