ABSTRACT
This chapter will look at the nuances of working with a professional team, and the differences that exist in the professional team environment that may not happen at the collegiate level, the league level, or the sponsor level. Some of the tips here can apply to the collegiate side, especially at the top levels of Division I sports in North America. However, the difference here is that at the end of the day professional sports is a job for the athlete. The amount of interest, even from the largest university, is different and because there are real dollars involved the perception, even though it has narrowed in the past 25 years, that these athletes are now “professional” as opposed to “amateur” collegians makes all the difference. Therefore the way some situations are handled, or event the time spent attending to detail, may be different. Even at the largest collegiate institutions there are many opportunities to shift job focus depending on the time of year. The demands are year-round but they can become seasonal. On the professional team level, the demands for one sport in most locales have now become year-round. Between offseason programs, the draft, player trading periods, free agency, Olympic events, and the need to keep the product relevant to business partners and season subscribers as teams justify the bottom line, there is very little time for offseason work. Like other roles in sports communications, the professional team publicist is evolving as well. The times of being the stats person, the media guy, the person dealing exclusively with the day-to-day has changed as teams look for more and more forms of publicity from the department. As long as there is balance, the change is not necessarily a bad thing. The team communications staff now has to deal with many more masters and find ways to understand the business side of sports more fully than before, which will make them or her more valuable. It will also expose the person to more
areas of publicity than before, ranging from entertainment press to business press and others. It makes the job more challenging, but ultimately more rewarding for those willing to take the challenge. What you will find on the professional level is that many of the skills you have acquired in other places still apply, although you may have less time to use them. In many cases, desktop design and layout, website design; long feature writing, marketing and sales programs, and sometimes community relations fall into other professional areas of an organization. However, the fact that you have those skills and can relate to those departments will make you a better person in the team setting. They will help you break down barriers and get the job done quicker. The problem is that the level of importance of your media relations skills will probably give you less time to concentrate on areas outside of your chief function than before. On the team level there are six principal roles:
• team spokesperson/public relations • general media relations • credentialing • game operations • publications/record keeping • staff “coordinator”/budgeting/person about town.
