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Sports in Society

Step up, kneel down: The athlete advocate has never been stronger

Colin Kaepernick’s protest followed WNBA players calling for change.
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Outspoken athletes have always been a wild card for teams, leagues and their corporate partners. But never quite like now.

On July 8, as the nation was reeling from two separate fatal police shootings during traffic stops and the ambush killings of five police officers in Dallas, Carmelo Anthony issued a call for all professional athletes to get political. The next day, WNBA players started wearing Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups to protest police shootings. Then, during an otherwise forgettable preseason football game on Aug. 26, a backup quarterback launched an intensely controversial movement by sitting during the national anthem.

Over the last 13 months, a growing group of athletes has weighed in on controversial subjects in evocative ways, inserting politics where many don’t want it, or expect it.

The actions seemed to put the sports industry on the defensive, as leagues, teams and sponsors wrestled with how — and if — they should respond. Fans were even caught in the dispute, faced with growing dissent that threatened the tone of the sports experience.



The controversies posed a new, complicated puzzle for the sports business during a year otherwise marked by historic events on the field of play, arguably putting the “Athlete Advocate” high on the list of most influential factors in the industry, if not now, for the future.

So far, the trend has led to few changes in policy or practices. But many experts predict the phenomenon will continue to spread, forcing teams and leagues to become more thoughtful and strategic as some of sports’ basic commercial assumptions evolve.

“The concern would be if what started with the [national] anthem becomes a steady stream of athletes using this canvas for activism,” said Rich Luker, founder of Luker on Trends and the ESPN Sports Poll. “It’s working at cross purposes to what the intent of sports is, which is to get relief from the stresses of life. That’s what the sports industry has to be concerned about.”

Socially conscious athletes can be a positive for teams, leagues and brands, experts say.
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Sometimes, like Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans’ one-day protest of President-elect Donald Trump, it’s been ham-fisted and ineffective. Other times, like the University of Missouri football team’s threat in late 2015 to sit until the school’s president resigned, the actions were shockingly efficient.

Most athletes still seem disinclined toward outward politics. For instance, the Colin Kaepernick-led national anthem protests generally have been confined to a handful of players. Many industry veterans counter the real influence of the movement by noting how small the athlete ranks are, or their failure to meaningfully spread into major sports other than football or basketball. But players are learning what works, growing more confident in their voice, and have a new media environment eager to spread their word.

Regardless, it’s delicate, new terrain for sports. With no playbook.

Properties should take the risks seriously, said Tony Ponturo, longtime media and sports marketing chief for Anheuser-Busch and executive vice president of strategy for Turnkey Intelligence. If even a modest percentage of fans sense a sport has become too political, it will pressure sponsorship executives already facing internal questions over the skyrocketing cost of sports deals.

“We all know sponsors flee very quickly,” Ponturo said. “They’re not the most stalwart. They have their own issues and concerns, so if they pay a lot of money and all they’ve done is walk into someone else’s dialogue of potential negativity, then they’re going to start saying, ‘Why am I paying millions of dollars for controversy?’”

‘A slippery slope’

Teams and leagues are in a tough spot.

In opinion polls, the viewing public has given conflicting feedback about the national anthem movement. Most polls show that a plurality of Americans don’t approve of kneeling during the song, and many fans have jeered the protesting athletes inside the stadium and spoken out in other ways. In surveys, many insist it’s one reason ratings are down for the NFL this year. (Network executives generally discount that theory.)

But on the other hand, most also think the athletes have a right to speak out. For instance, a Seton Hall Sports Poll in September found that just a quarter of fans, or 27 percent, personally approved of Kaepernick’s protest. More than half, 54 percent, said he shouldn’t be required to stand by league rules, and only one in five, or 20 percent, wanted him punished.

In the court of public opinion, Luker said, leagues and teams have much more to lose from cracking down than they do from passively allowing unpopular statements.

Photo by: GETTY IMAGES (2)
Athlete advocacy has exploded in 2016, highlighted most by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (above) kneeling during the national anthem, and being joined by athletes of all types across sports in forms of protest and unity (below).
“This is a very slippery slope on both sides,” Luker said. “The athletes risk muting the most powerful aspect of sports, which is it’s fun and relief from day-to-day stress. But owners suppressing it would only accelerate that.”

Formal policies and procedures are a bad idea,said Winston & Strawn partner Jeffrey Kessler. Take, for

instance, the NBA’s rule mandating that players stand for the anthem versus how it’s enforced.

“It’s very unclear that rule would be enforced in today’s environment,” Kessler said. “In the WNBA there was a rule about wearing T-shirts, and the fine was immediately revoked. I think the NBA and WNBA learned a lot from that experience.”

Within two weeks of the WNBAplayers wearing unsanctioned T-shirts to support Black Lives Matter, WNBA President Lisa Borders rescinded the fines, tweeting that she “Appreciate[s] our players expressing themselves on matters important to them.” The league instead helped players organize discussions with local police, and also didn’t fine those who joined the anthem protest. The NBA never acted on its own players violating those rules forpolitical reasons.

Borders said she lifted the fines after stepping back from her disciplinary perspective and re-evaluating the bigger picture, like she’d been trained to do in politics as vice mayor of Atlanta. The rules are still on the books, but they were counterproductive to the league’s position in this case.

“We tend as human beings just to react emotionally,” Borders said. “So when your cooler head prevails, you have not only the opportunity but the obligation to step back and really think about whatever’s going on much more strategically and comprehensively.”

‘Enormously challenging’

While Borders preached a flexible approach, experts quoted for this article were virtually universal in saying rules protecting the integrity of the game, or protecting apparel sponsors, are appropriate.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber thinks leagues are courting trouble when they back off clear rules on things such as apparel, in part because they protect sponsor value, and also because of where that conversation might lead.

“I really object to people not wearing [league-approved apparel] and wearing something that is a political statement, because there’s no end to that,” Garber said. “What if it’s hate speech? What if one person is viewing it as hate speech and another person isn’t? You’re starting to get into a dynamic that is enormously challenging.”

So what’s the answer: Is it possible to write rules that can be uniformly and predictably applied?

The call for athletes to speak up intensified in July, before the NFL season, when WNBA players wore Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups (above) and NBA stars Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James urged athletes to be socially active during the ESPY Awards (below).
Photo by: NBAE / GETTY IMAGES; ESPN IMAGES
National Basketball Players Association chief Michele Roberts said she’s proud of the work her union and the NBA undertook this year to encourage social activism — before the season, as the Kaepernick movement was gaining steam, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Roberts addressed the issue together and co-authored a letter to players promising help in dealing with social problems. But, Roberts said, she would resist any attempt to formalize rules around activism in the labor contract now being negotiated. “In my view, I’d just as soon rely on the U.S. Constitution,
because that’s where I think the players’ rights overall begin.”

Roberts called the dynamic “evolving” and conceded that one day leagues may have to reconsider their amenable position if there’s evidence of it hurting their commercial prospects. Few insiders interviewed for this article see that directly, despite some NFL fans’ insistence on its role in the league’s ratings decline.

Team executives have said, privately, that sponsors have threatened to walk away if they saw national anthem protests. But Momentum Worldwide CEO Chris Weil hasn’t seen it, and there’s been no public example of a sponsor quitting a team or league because of it.

“I have no personal knowledge of it,” Weil said. “Maybe some smaller sponsors, specific to some stadiums, depending on where they are in the country. Maybe.”

But watch this space if the trend continues, Weil said.

“If this is systemic throughout the league and goes on, and gets more vocal, then is there an erosion of consumer trust? Maybe,” he said.

Individual players’ deals are more prone to brand alarm, though. CenturyLink and the Air Academy Federal Credit Union both canceled contracts with Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall after he joined the anthem protests, and insiders report, without specifics, that other potential deals have died in negotiations after players turned political.

‘Important roles’

Rather than hurt or threaten the league, athlete activists have helped the NBA, said former Commissioner David Stern. In turn, the league has made its athletes more credible spokespeople by tying politics to social action through its NBA Cares program.

Stern noted Sacramento Kings star DeMarcus Cousins’ work to hold a police-community discussion and block party in Mobile, Ala., as an example, which followed Anthony’s community meeting in South Central Los Angeles in July.

Athletes using sports for political statements can be a slippery slope, experts say, potentially alienating fans and altering the idea of sports being a fun relief from life’s day-to-day stress.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES (2)
“Our players have been very constructive in helping to direct dialogue around important topics,” Stern said. “And if a shirt appears that occasionally they maybe would like to rethink or not, that’s a small price to pay for the important roles they play.”

The MLS’s Garber has not had to confront the issue directly but believes the trend is fundamentally positive.

“The Kaepernick thing to me, while I disagree vehemently with the platform, the positive thing is that it’s creating a

conversation,” Garber said at the University of South Florida Speaker Series in October. “When an athlete does it, it has a profile that takes what were things that were bubbling around in the community and it’s putting it on the front pages of the newspapers both for good and for bad.”

Stern’s guidance to leagues is to not overreact, and to keep an eye on the big picture. Socially aware, political athletes will ultimately be a good thing for sports, he says, even if a given circumstance causes angst in the front offices.

“Sometimes we’ll all be aghast,” he said. “I don’t mean to paint it with such a nice, clean brush that every word that’s uttered by an owner or a player is going to come with universal support.”

Ponturo suggested that teams and leagues should form cabinets of business partners, so they can be in a position to quickly respond to those cases. And leagues need to know precisely how they will approach emerging political issues, to avoid the disastrous appearance of indecision.

“We’re at a tipping point, in that it has to be addressed,” Ponturo said. “It may not be liked, and it’s sensitive in this political environment, I understand that. But it’s better to address it more head-on now, because it will keep growing.”

‘A platform to speak’

If protests were undermining sports business, TV ratings would be a leading indicator of fan displeasure. NFL ratings are indeed down and, according to surveys, many Americans say the protests are part of the reason. But media executives widely reject that theory, and Nielsen figures show that people are watching for fewer hours, not ceasing to tune in altogether.

Rights holders have not avoided the protests but also said they’ve decreased their focus as the season wears on.

In late August, NBC Sports Executive Producer Sam Flood returned from the Rio Olympics to find Kaepernick’s budding movement a major preseason storyline. He called a meeting with NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus, “Sunday Night Football” Executive Producer Fred Gaudelli and NBC communications chief Greg Hughes to decide how to handle it.

“We have shown it, because we think that’s an obligation,” Flood said. But that obligation doesn’t extend indefinitely, especially if the story doesn’t develop any further. “At a certain point, if it becomes the norm, it no longer becomes necessary, unless there’s some movement from that point,” Flood added.

The massive media platform of sports offers athletes more of an opportunity to be heard today.
Photo by: NBAE / GETTY IMAGES
The network has asked Kaepernick for an on-camera interview with Bob Costas since the second week of the season, a request that so far has not been granted. “There’s always a platform to speak on that point, and if an athlete does a form of protest without the words to explain the protest, it’s tougher to make the point,” Flood said.
Kaepernick has addressed the subject in numerous locker room interviews and media conferences.

At ESPN, the network instructed talent to avoid judging an individual, even if they wanted to disagree. “What we tell them is, don’t make it personal,” said President John Skipper. “Talk about what he did. Talk about what you think about it. You can be passionate. But we’d prefer if you didn’t go to, ‘This makes him a good or a bad person’ — particularly a bad person. We’re not looking to disparage individuals. We’ve done a pretty good job of this, I think.”

Skipper said the network is constantly re-evaluating its posture toward the anthem protests, and the coverage has decreased in recent weeks.

“With Kaepernick and other matters like this, it’s always a modulation,” he said. “You are always trying to figure out if we’re doing too much, if we need to pull back, if the story has played out. It’s a pretty hard call to make. This story was a big story for a long time. It’s still there. At this point, we are not covering it in the same kind of way that we did.”

‘The right small audience’

This year’s divisive election had the entire country on edge. But insiders say this latest spurt of sports activism isn’t likely to go away now that the voting is over. Athletes have discovered their voice, and the modern media landscape will sustain it.

Speaking in ESPN The Magazine in October, the Knicks’ Anthony said, “The people in position of power understand now more than ever that some of the athletes are just as powerful as them.”

Octagon founder Phil de Picciotto said political statements will be sustained and propelled by sports talk, as well as digital and social media. All of those platforms thrive on controversy, which means any remotely political action will be seized up and analyzed up close.

“It’s not so much those actions alone,” de Picciotto said. “It’s the explosive reaction on social media that amplifies the action.”

LeBron James campaigned for Hillary Clinton, and has established himself as a credible voice.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
That same media has altered the commercial strategy for athletes, he said.

For most of the mass media era, the basic celebrity marketing goal has been to become as relevant and popular among as large a group as possible, a goal that discourages strong opinions and rewards the marketing careers of neutral stars like Tiger Woods and, at least as a player, Michael Jordan. (Now a team owner, Jordan this year donated $1 million each to the NAACP and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, hoping to improve police-community relations.)

Now, de Picciotto said, players can communicate directly with very specific groups of fans who will embrace and reward activism. While T-shirts supporting Black Lives Matter might not play particularly well in corporate suites and courtside seats, athletes like Anthony and LeBron James can engender especially loyal, respectful audiences with politics.

Turnkey Sports Poll

The following are results of the Turnkey Sports Poll taken in November. The survey covered more than 2,000 senior-level sports industry executives spanning professional and college sports.

Do athlete protests during the playing of the national anthem have a meaningful effect on NFL TV ratings?

Yes 35%
No 62%
Not sure / No response 3%

Should children look up to athletes as role models?

Yes 53%
No 39%
Not sure / No response 8%

With which of the following statements do you agree, if any? (Note: Respondents could select all that apply.)

Athletes and sports figures speaking up on social issues is productive 41%
Athletes and sports figures should speak up on social issues 36%
Ownership/front-office execs should be able to institute policies to dissuade athletes from speaking up on social issues 25%
I would like to know where my favorite athlete(s) stand on social issues 15%
None of these 27%

In your opinion, live media broadcasts dedicate how much time and attention to athlete protests/stances on social issues?

Too much 63%
Just the right amount of 24%
Not enough 7%
Not sure / No response 6%

In the last five years, which of the following organizations has had the biggest positive impact on social issues in America?

NBA 43%
NFL 11%
MLB 7%
NCAA 6%
NASCAR 5%
MLS 2%
PGA Tour 2%
NHL 1%
Not sure / No response 23%

Source: Turnkey Sports & Entertainment in conjunction with SportsBusiness Journal. Turnkey Intelligence specializes in research, measurement and lead generation for brands and properties. Visit www.turnkeyse.com.


“The right small audience is more valuable than the wrong large audience,” de Picciotto said. Illustrating that point, sales of Kaepernick’s personalized jersey soared thanks to a passionate response from his supporters even as he was booed and criticized.

In some ways sports have been slow to catch up to modern marketing, where a social conscience is a desired quality in a brand, said Momentum’s Weil. Millennials in particular, Weil said, want a company to stand for something.

“Brands that have a true purpose are doing better than those that don’t,” Weil said. “If [an athlete] is very political, and they’re active in their communities to make a difference, and there’s a brand that’s the same, that’s a match.”

‘Part of our history’

Leagues and teams are starting to recognize a pattern in popular opinion and sponsor perspectives: The tone, substance and timing of an athlete protest is crucial to how it’s perceived. Fans and brands don’t like an athlete speaking out who isn’t fully informed or doesn’t intend to translate his political statements into action.

Condemnation of Kaepernick’s decision to abstain in the presidential election was widespread, with many saying he undermined his message and gave credence to those who questioned his motives. Also, Kaepernick lost support when his message included some sartorial choices seen as pointlessly antagonistic, such as his pigs-dressed-like-police socks and a shirt depicting Fidel Castro meeting with Malcolm X. Evans’ anti-Trump protest died amid intense criticism of his own failure to vote.

On the other hand, James enthusiastically endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in a state that went decisively for Trump, and received little blowback. Why? He’s established himself as a credible voice for social progress away from the particular context of a campaign. When boxing icon Muhammad Ali died in June, the laudatory obituaries noted his consistency and longevity as an activist, and painted his refusal to serve in Vietnam in a starkly different light from the media coverage of the time decades earlier.

Another reason Kaepernick has struck a nerve in the way that others haven’t is the target: the national anthem. In 23 years of opinion polling, Luker said, fans have never altered their level of interest or engagement based on off-the-field behavior. They only care if the activities start to affect the game’s integrity or athletic performance. They can compartmentalize. But the anthem protest is seen as part of the sporting event, and a deeply meaningful one at that.

“Things like pregame T-shirts, that doesn’t have any impact on what goes on on the field,” Luker said. “And it doesn’t put the fan in any position where they have to decide between two values.”

Ramsey Poston, a former NASCAR communications executive who now works on Capitol Hill, said the danger to sponsors is overstated.

“I don’t think a whole lot of people are going to make decisions on what product they buy based upon what an athlete might do or say on their own time,” Poston said. “Where the brand or sponsor comes in, they need to focus on the product. Stepping in between an athlete and his or her actions or words I think is a slippery slope for a sponsor as well.”

Roberts, the union chief, says the country isn’t the same country that Ali enraged. While people might not like a given opinion, the mere presence of politics in the locker room isn’t the problem it was for older generations.

“We as a nation have matured, and it’s kind of shocking to think that it was shocking that an athlete had an opinion,” Roberts said. “It’s now part of our history. It’s not that unusual.”

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