ABSTRACT
The ways in which you communicate with sport and recreation participants will affect many aspects of your managerial and legal relationship with them. As in any relationship, business or personal, what you say to people and how you say it become a cornerstone of the relationship. Use your communication mechanisms to convey and reinforce the message that you are concerned about the welfare of participants and that you are sharing information with them to make their participation experiences better and safer. The notion of using documents to avoid liability, such as the exculpatory clause, is only a secondary aspect. Using the law to attain a competitive advantage in the business of sport has particular application in the context of information exchange, since you and your organization have complete control over the messages you send to your participants. This philosophy should sound familiar to you—it represents the essence of the preventive law process as discussed in Chapter 2.
