Sports: Faster, Higher, Stronger, and Public Relations

The efficiency of a company's activity resides in designing and managing a long term relationship with the athletes, spectators, sponsors and community. The relationship with any of these four shareholders can be addressed through public relations, a marketing communication technique that brings value both for the company sending the message, and for other categories interested in its well-being. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the reader to the relationships between PR and sports. It explores how sports public relations practitioners have developed a range of successful strategies and tactics for influencing media coverage, and supporting the sport's domains. The authors conclude that the effective use of Public Relations in sport can generate conversion, facilitate sport representatives positioning, and maintain continued sport sustenance.

Military Performance, 2019

An amazing development of sport business has been present in the past decades. This trend started in the mid-twentieth century. One of the basic reasons for this state is the marketing, media and PR conversion of major sports events into spectacles with properties of a short-term global phenomenon. Benefits of such a global expansion of sports mega-events are not purely financial, although the financial benefit is the most obvious one. The positive effect of PR of sports mega-events is generating the positive attitude of sport and sport practice. Trend of actively spending one's leisure time is derived from a general interest in sport activities today (though this is not necessarily followed by practicing sport activities). Therefore, there is an emphasized need for further development of Public Relations and Communication strategies, knowledge and understanding of the communication management of sports events. The coordinated implementation of PR activities and communication methods in sports reduces potential negative social impacts and any financial losses on the one hand, but it more commonly increases the benefits of the aforemen-tioned elements. Analyses and research in this field are rare and therefore this paper represents initial theoretical contribution. The paper analyzes the special event-sporting spectacle as an instrument of PR communication in the broader social context.

Public Relations Review, 2008

Indeed, this special issue can be seen as a (somewhat belated) response to Neupauer's 'plea for helping an unknown field' articulated in the Sage Handbook of Public Relations (Neupauer, 2001: 551-556).

This essay highlights the unique and intimately interrelated nature of the relationship between communication and advertising by providing a selective overview of communication about and through sport within the context of promotional culture. While advertising and marketing of sport leagues, teams, celebrity athletes, and commodities are important, this treatment focuses on how the advertising industry has come to dominate contemporary social life, and why ‘‘sport’’ is such an important channel of communication within promotional culture. The article (a) outlines the emergence, nature, and social significance of advertising; (b) offers a framework for analysis based on the circuit of commodification and communication model that emphasizes the context and complex interrelationships between particular moments in commodification processes; (c) discusses a current research example examining sport, globalization, and corporate nationalism; and (d) considers directions for future research.

2007

2018

This year will be the 110th since the first time that athletes ran the exact distance of 42.195 km at the Olympic Games in London, the length known today as the standard distance for a marathon. Si ...

International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 2007

Studying sport in the academia has been in existence for several decades. The educational pursuits in sport have been rooted in such disciplines as history, management, sociology, marketing, organisational behaviour, and law. Communication is another of these established academic disciplines upon which the study of sport has been juxtaposed. One way for the intersection of sport and communication -sport communication -to continue to grow as its own academic discipline is through defining the field itself. Therefore, this analysis proposes a unified definition for the academic study of sport communication and examines the unique and integrated elements involved. Such a definitional inquiry assists in the development of the disciplinary parameters and research possibilities of the field of sport communication.

… Public Relations and …, 2010

In March 2009, the Sri Lankan cricket team toured Pakistan for a series of matches. On route to a match at the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore the team and their International Cricket Council (ICC) test match umpires were attacked by terrorists. The two buses carrying each group ...

This paper argues that the media exercises a significant influence upon the operation of international sport. ‘International’ can be a concept or a framework. For our purposes, the concept ‘international’ is attached to sport, because it is defined as a practice exercised by people from all over the world no matter the background and any other variable. Moreover, ‘international’ is a framework from where sport is broadcasted with the help of the media, televison, radio, journals, newspapers, etc. Consequently for this study, within the process of technological innovation, sport has evolved to become an object—business. Sport has been recurrently involved with politics, ever since its origins with the Greek Olympics. Importantly, this paper does not look specifically at the history of when the relationship between the media and sport really started, but considers the 1950s as a starting point for this discussion. “[Sport] was brought into the average person’s living room thanks to the rapid expansion of television beginning in the 1950s” (Dichter: 9). Media on its side is a complex term which can be defined in three ways. It relies on the tools used to produce and distribute content. Secondly, it depends on which way it is portrayed—traditional media forms such as color TV and alternative media forms such as social media. Lastly, the audience is crucial as they are the consumers who influence the content of any broadcasting (Howard & Parks: 362). With sport, the definition can vary. For the purpose of this paper, sport is defined as “an institutionalized competitive activity that involves vigorous physical exertion or the use of relatively complex physical skills by individuals whose participation is motivated by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors […]” (Cha: 1). This definition emphasises that sport should be about the competition of individuals exercising skilled force within a set of rules. Of course, sport is a prominent practice but can also be a powerful tool. This paper defines sport as a tool and product rather than the practice alone. Consequently, sport is not only able to provide a sense of national belonging and unity, but characterizes a tool for diplomacy that goes beyond borders such as Kissinger and Nixon’s ping pong diplomacy. Indeed, “Sport is an international product and service that influences businesses on a global scale” (Ratten: 763). It is a quite clear that no other tool than sport is able to inspire and motivate such numbers of people within one cause. This led the media to promote the transformation of amateur games into professional sports (BBC, 2015). The role and influence of the media on international sport will be looked through its evolution and functionality. One can argue that in the 21st century the success of international sport depends on the media. If it wasn’t for the media, international sport would not be that popular due to the fact that one can only fit around 60.000 people into a stadium but millions in front of a screen. This statement is justified within the extensive dependency/relationship that the media holds over international sport and vice-versa. Morover, through the power of the media and its influence it has on all domains of political, social and economic, it can be argued that Rupert Murdoch in 2015 has more influence towards the public domain and opinion than the Prime Minister of Britain (Berkowitz, 2011). This assumption is a methapor but it suggests a different angle to consider in order to understand the dynamics in contemporary’s society.

Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology

E-sports within the gaming industry characterize an economic sector that is engaged in the developing, marketing, and sale of video games. They represent many opportunities for advertising and public relations, which are very important to increase the visibility of e-sports. The use of both has proved far more effective, because it allowed a rapid increase in their popularity. The aim of this chapter is to compare the use of public relations and advertising in e-sports and to determine their appropriateness. So, the relationship between public relations, advertising, and e-sports is developed and researched for the first time here. The authors used qualitative comparative analysis between public relations and advertising in the context of e-sports based on Natus Vincere, one of the most important Ukrainian organizations in the gaming industry. The rise of the gaming industry and recent success of e-sports demonstrate the profitable economic potentials of gaming spectatorship.