Introduction
Sport is quite unique in that, unlike other organizations where the message is primarily conveyed through marketing and advertising, in sport, the messages and image are conveyed through media coverage. While the coverage is usually positive, any transgression committed by a sports organization or sport athlete becomes problematic as it has to be exposed by media at one point given the close relationship between media and sport (Bruce & Tini, 2008). In addition, such transgression receives wide coverage due to their newsworthiness hence giving the sports organization or sport athlete involves bad publicity that would damage their reputation and stability (Sato, 2015). It is for these reasons that most of the transgression in the sports industry become huge scandal and crisis which if not well managed can end the career of individuals’ players as well as lead to the death of the sports organization (Bruce & Tini, 2008). Therefore, it is important that sports organizations are able to handle crisis properly and professionally to minimize the impact the crisis and scandal would have on their reputation as well as stability. With this in mind, this paper will critically evaluate the crisis management by Essendon club following its supplements program to identify what it did right and what could have been done differently.