European Super Own-Goal
This week Matt shares his views on one of the biggest PR own goals of the year; the European Super League.
Two things that I really care about collided pretty spectacularly this week, football and PR.
In case you have no interest in the former then let me give you a 10 second lowdown on what happened; 12 of the biggest football clubs in Europe, including 6 from England basically said up yours to their own leagues and fans and tried to set up their own exclusive ‘European Super League’.
An unprecedented and unanimously negative and hostile reaction ensued, from the Prime Minister down. Cue an embarrassing U-turn.
As PR disasters go, it was right up there. Considering the potential amount of money at stake for those pushing the unwanted change through, hundreds of millions if not billions, you’d have thought careful consideration would have been made to how this would be communicated. Probably weeks or months of planning, pre-briefing, focus-groups, (turd-polishing as my first head of comms put it) paving the way so that the news would be expected and perhaps even palatable.
I’ve been involved in PR situations that we knew would be universally unpopular, negatively impacting the finances of around 50% of the UK’s households. But we planned for months prior to the announcement, carefully constructing a reasoning behind the bitter pill we were asking people to swallow. And we’d have business leaders across the national broadcast channels, talking to national journalists and radio stations, carefully explaining the whys and wherefores.
Not so in this case. It’s believed that the PRs at the 6 English clubs only had around a day’s notice of what was about to be announced. Worse still, when the unwelcomed news broke, none of the football clubs’ leaders were anywhere to be seen, exacerbating the maelstrom of negative publicity surrounding them and their breakaway project. And in that void the opposing voices were emboldened, the cries of greed grew louder until the pressure on them went beyond breaking point.
Recent history has taught us that almost any PR disaster can be managed to some degree (see most days of the Trump presidency). And as I have mentioned previously, and in fact only last week to MGAA members, there are simple steps that can be taken to help manage such crises. But the utter lack of preparation for the people trying to manage this financial land-grab, and bunker-mentality of their leaders, left them defenceless, and the grubby plans of the billionaire owners in tatters.
Unsurprising therefore that the unpolished turd stank the place out.