Aug 3, 1998
For immediate release: (Charlotte, NC)- - This new age of reckless behavior among athletes, and increased public attention and media scrutiny of off-field behavior has wrought a need for new coping strategies among professional and collegiate athletic organizations, but while some have implemented formal policies that deal with the potential encroachment on their bottom-line and injury to their image, many allow the ball to drop where it may, admitting that they are chronically on-edge, expecting the unexpected.
The 1998 Hessert Sports Crisis Survey, commissioned by the Sports Media Challenge division of North Carolina-based Communication Concepts, accomplishes a comprehensive look at the preparation level and impact of crisis on athletic organizations. The survey broadly defines "crisis" as events or issues that have the potential to seriously shake up an organization's day-to-day operations, finances, or honorable image. Kathleen Hessert, President of Sports Media Challenge who authored the survey, has extensive experience in crisis planning and management.
Sports Media Challenge, a strategic communications training and consulting company, surveyed 345 professional league teams from the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, and Division 1-A and 1-AA colleges and the findings are stunning. The report reveals that more than 70% of both professional and collegiate teams experienced some sort of crisis in 1997, and that more than half of those respondents said that the crisis meant a serious to significant interruption of daily operations. Yet only 56% of professional teams, and a shocking 27% of collegiate teams have a formal crisis plan in place to cope with unexpected situations.
"Sports teams and organizations are in trouble. The offensive disaster train is running and no one wants to create an off-field defense to stop it," said Kathleen Hessert. "Without a plan in place, disaster strikes twice, as a crisis can hurt an organization in terms of disruption of management's time and resources, along with causing additional financial burdens."
Delineating lawsuits, NCAA violations, arrests for criminal activity, and deaths among the crisis that hit the athletic industry from 1997-98, the survey, which garnered a 23.2% response rate, quantifies the level of impact a crisis has on an athletic program or organization, and found clear recognition of the level of controversial conduct of today's athlete, typically shielded and gilded by multi-million dollar contracts and endorsement opportunities.
More importantly, the 1998 Hessert Crisis Survey is a comparative look at the difference in organizations from 1994 (when another survey was conducted) and now. Within four years the rate of professional athletic organizations that had instituted a formal policy of coping with "crisis" situations more than doubled, while amateur organizations slacked even further in instituting a firm off-field defense mechanism. While in 1994 only 21% of professional teams had a strategic plan for dealing with crisis, in 1998 more than half, 56% of professional teams have adopted formal guidelines for dealing with what seems to have become a stream of inevitably perennial events. In fact, 70% of all athletic programs, collegiate and professional, reported that they are currently involved in or coming out of a crisis situation, with the average temporary impact lasting from one week to three months. But almost one-third of all surveyed said that they are constantly in crisis mode.
Clearly notable among the 1994 and 1998 comparative findings were the status of collegiate organizations. While the expectation of crisis has increased by 20% overall, they not only remain far less prepared than their professional counterparts, they are also much less prepared than they were in 1994.
Without an integral strategic plan to respond swiftly and effectively while maintaining good team morale in the face of challenging situations, the collegiate organizations schlep along with almost70% of programs lacking any formal strategic crisis plan. Still, almost 50% of these upper echelon athletic teams reported that there has been a significant increase in the interruption of their daily operations due to the dramatic incidents, a number that has risen since 1994.
This age of billion-dollar advertising campaigns has rendered what seems to be a prevailing industry mantra: "Sports is a business." Yet the pervasive lack of internal planning and preparation revealed in the 1998 Hessert Sports Crisis Survey clearly proves that sports organizations have not fully evolved.
Contact: Rocky Welsing
For More Information on the Survey Click Here
