News and Insights
Are our sporting heroes ‘playing it safe’ when it comes to their public image?
January 24, 2025
Ten years ago this month, Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness famously dismissed Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal as a team of sons-in-law. The implication? While undoubtedly ‘nice guys’ and talented, they lacked the edge or personality to win major trophies.
In the Irish sporting context, there is no shortage of hard-nosed, highly successful competitors on the field. However, Souness’s son-in-law analogy certainly resonates off the pitch.
In effect, many of our most high-profile sporting heroes present muted, cautious, public personas — safe, respectful, but somewhat conservative. This perception, particularly across Ireland’s big three codes, was the focus of The42FM podcast last week, provocatively titled ‘How our sports stars have their personalities removed’.
As discussed on the podcast, much of this risk-averse culture stems from the adage: ‘Don’t give the opposition anything to pin up on the dressing room wall.’ In essence, athletes are wary of making bold, bombastic, or even mildly provocative statements that could play into the hands of their rivals. This is particularly acute in team sports, where the mildest media misstep on the part of the individual can come with collective repercussions.
However, this dynamic isn’t unique to Irish sports; most elite athletes operate from a similar starting point. Yet, in Ireland, this approach feels particularly pronounced.
Some of this can be attributable to a domestic sporting culture that implicitly espouses the virtues of hard work, sacrifice, suffering and the collective over the individual. Anyone who deviates too far from this play book or is seen to seek out the limelight is often treated with side-eyed suspicion.
Another frequently cited argument is that our athletes are excessively media-trained. Yes, media training plays a role, however, the goal of media training isn’t typically about learning to say nothing; it is about becoming more skilled and impactful in how you deliver your message.
Admittedly, at times, this means knowing how to navigate potentially difficult questions, but the starting point is to become more sophisticated, rather than more risk-averse in your communication. Ascribing blame to the ‘dark arts’ of media training is missing the bigger picture. More accurately, it is the risk-averse backdrop within which it takes place that shapes these outcomes.
The media – social media divide
The waning influence of traditional media is well documented, with many top athletes now boasting larger social media followings than the outlets seeking to interview them. Increasingly, teams and athletes are unapologetically positioning themselves as content creators and publishers, prioritising direct-to-fan content.
For athletes in the NBA and NFL — such as LeBron James, Draymond Green, and the Kelce brothers — podcasting has become a natural next step in growing and monetising their personal brands.
In this entrenched ‘attention economy,’ why would they provide media — a direct competitor — with free content? Whilst Irish athletes competing at the top level have been slower to embrace this trend, the fundamental dilemma remains the same: which platform best serves their goals when trying to reach their audience?
Social media offers the advantage of curated, controlled messaging tailored to their personal brand. In contrast, traditional media interviews carry the inherent risk of awkward questions, misrepresentation, and/or sensationalism. For journalists and those of us who love the written word, this shift is particularly troubling. For athletes and their teams, however, it’s a matter of unsentimental maths.
Sponsor-facilitated media interviews
Usually, when public figures engage with the media — be it a politician, executive, actor, or author — they have a clear goal, and something to sell. In contrast, an interview without a sales pitch can make for a very stilted, passive and disconnected conversation. In this context, often when Irish athletes sit down with the media, it is to fulfil a sponsorship commitment.
Ideally, the athlete will have a natural affinity with the brand or product they represent. However, without the necessary strategic input, these brand partnerships are frequently short-lived and transactional. In such scenarios, the athlete’s goal is to fulfil their contractual ask without putting a foot wrong. This lack of focus then bleeds into the quality of the conversation, leaving the interviewer and audience underwhelmed.
In recent years, brands and their ambassador athletes have slowly become more sophisticated in how they execute sports sponsorships. They recognise that an effective brand partnership means more than a staid photocall or a captioned brand ambassador interview. It is about adding value within the partnership, as opposed to the vague pursuit of ‘brand awareness’. However, some are still reluctant to depart from the sponsorship blueprint of old.
Are sports people missing a trick?
So, are Irish athletes missing a trick by not engaging with media? Not necessarily. In the high-pressure world of elite sports, the goal is simply to win. In this work environment obsessed with ‘controlling the controllables’, the perceived high-risk, low-reward dilemma of being more forthcoming with media just doesn’t add up.
Yes, greater media engagement might help grow or publicise their sport, but for most athletes, that’s a less immediate consideration.
Whilst this safety-first approach to media has its merits, there is also a significant, if unquantifiable, value in seeking to humanise the athlete. Why does this matter? When teams are winning, it elevates their success, captures the public imagination and thus makes them more marketable. More importantly, during tougher times, it can soften the criticism and foster goodwill.
Although media doesn’t have a monopoly on shaping how we connect with athletes, it still plays a significant role in framing the narratives that define how we consume sports.
Therefore, in a culture obsessed with marginal gains, maintaining an open and constructive relationship with journalists can sometimes be the difference between a team being celebrated for their brave efforts in defeat or condemned for their losses. Former England manager Gareth Southgate models so much of his management style around this principle.
In Irish rugby, Southern Hemisphere-born players like James Lowe and Mack Hansen are regularly cited in media as some of the squad’s most engaging and extroverted members — perhaps reflecting the conservative sensibilities ingrained in Irish grassroots rugby. These perceived conservative values, however, have largely served the game well, with Irish rugby’s success on and off the pitch the envy of domestic and international rivals alike.
By extension, in a polarised era where everything has the potential to become a culture war, it is inevitable that sponsors and sports administrators gravitate to athletes who are measured and careful in their public image.
Furthermore, on the rare occasions that athletes do let media behind the curtain, it is not always a fruitful exercise. In a passage in Johnny Sexton’s recent memoir Obsessed, he sought to contextualise his tense exchange with Rieko Ioane at the final whistle of the Ireland team’s quarter final defeat to New Zealand.
The extract, first appearing in The Sunday Times, was naturally seized upon by media, and quickly became the defining – and quickly tedious – narrative surrounding the 2024 Autumn Series, with Ioane cast as the pantomime villain. The Irish team publicly took the controversy in their stride, but behind closed doors, one would expect that it was chalked down as an unhelpful distraction.
‘More characters’
Media and the sporting public want to see more characters in the game; however, we typically want our characters on our terms. This means asking our favourite athletes to operate within the highly subjective lines we deem as acceptably mischievous, rebellious, flamboyant or opinionated. Athletes who misjudge these parameters can pay a high price.
Combat sports remain an obvious outlier, where being able to sell a fight is baked into the athlete’s job spec. However, for the Irish Big Three sports, we’re unlikely to see a radical departure from the risk-averse relationship that has long defined the media-athlete dynamic.
Yet, for sports looking to grow their profile — such as our current and future Olympians, the Ireland women’s football and rugby teams, or the League of Ireland—there is an opportunity to leverage media to tell their stories, sell their product and showcase their full personalities.
Does this potentially require ceding some control? Yes. Will athletes occasionally get it wrong? Inevitably. But with the right support and guardrails, this approach could boost the popularity of these sports and unlock new commercial opportunities for those willing to embrace them.
This article was originally published on Tuesday 21 January in The Journal.
POSTED BY: Paddy O’Dea
