Elite sport has the odds stacked in its favour when it comes to spotting breakthroughs in high performance media management.

Here’s why the circumstances surrounding sport give its media managers a strong argument for being society’s most match-fit.

 

• Super high profile: In some countries, a quarter of all media coverage is sport. This makes athletes and coaches far and away the highest profile group of people in many societies.

 

• On-field pressures: The sports field is a hugely volatile workplace. Everything can change in a heartbeat for athletes and coaches. It makes sport the perfect production line for heroes and villains. And that's one of the key reasons for its popularity. But it’s an unstable environment, so everyone is constantly on their toes.

 

• Off-field pressures: Us humans are generally at our best athletically when we’re young (~18-32yos). We can be good even younger in some sports (like gymnastics, swimming and skateboarding) and even older in others (like golf, darts and sailing). But, like the rest of us, many athletes will have life stumbles as they navigate their way to adulthood. They'll just do it with a whole lot more people watching and commenting on what’s unfolding.

 

• Mental health challenges: According to some research, elite athletes are more prone to mental health challenges than the general population. The intense pressure to perform, the constant scrutiny, and the physical and mental demands of training and competition contribute to these. Things can be compounded by a perceived stigma around asking for help. Some athletes don’t want to reveal what they fear could be considered a chink in their armour.

 

• The overdue rise of women: For way too long, there were hardly any opportunities for women to be pro athletes. That’s changing now - and very quickly - which is great. But the foundations of sport were mostly built by men for men. So there are plenty of things that pro sport is in the process of rewiring to better take care of, for example, the needs of high profile teenage girls.

 

The sports media dilemma: Promoting the game, while protecting the player

Sport has a greater ability to promote itself through the media than any other industry.

But it also has a huge responsibility to take care of the young people that it places into the most intense of media spotlights.

It’s a difficult balance to get right.

How do you promote and protect?

How do you tell your stories and safeguard your people?

It’s an understandable tension - which is added to by the need to constantly perform.

But such challenges drive innovation.

And they’re also what, arguably, make sports media managers society’s most match-fit.