ABSTRACT
Introduction The saying ‘any publicity is good publicity’ assumes that creating any amount of public awareness is worth the consequences. In the case of sport, bad publicity can ruin careers and severely damage organizations. Artist Andy Warhol claimed that in the future everyone would be world famous for 15 minutes, and in a world saturated by media this means that bad publicity is likely to be the only publicity that some people receive. Professional sport organizations and their employees, however, are subjected to intense media and public interest, which means that the likelihood of receiving bad publicity is great. Bad publicity, which results from crises and scandals at one end of the spectrum to accidents and minor misdemeanours at the other, is to be avoided because of its potential negative impacts.
