FIFA, the IPL, and the high stakes of sports PR

It is IPL season. Stadiums are sold out. Brand deals are being signed. Social media is doing what social media does. And somewhere in that organised chaos, a sports PR professional is fielding calls at midnight, prepping an athlete for a 5 AM press conference, and trying to figure out how to protect a reputation before the morning newspapers go to print.

Sports PR looks glamorous from the outside. Inside, it is one of the most demanding, emotionally complex, and strategically nuanced corners of communications. And as the sector grows in India, with specialised agencies emerging to serve athletes, teams, federations, and corporates, it is worth examining what actually makes this field interesting.

The Storytelling Is Real

In most PR, the narrative is built around something, whether a product, a service, or a leader's vision. In sports PR, the narrative is someone, their struggle, their discipline, their wins and failures. 

As Neha Rastogi, founder of WordsWork Communications and one of India's pioneers in this space, puts it: "When I'm telling the story of an athlete, it's genuine storytelling." That authenticity is both the asset and the responsibility.

This changes the entire nature of the work. You are not crafting a press release about a company announcement. You are working with a 22-year-old who has trained since childhood, is under immense physical and psychological pressure, and may have just lost a match in front of a national audience. The sensitivity required in that moment is not something a standard communications playbook prepares you for.

Athlete Sensitivities Are Non-Negotiable

Rica Roy, sports editor at NDTV with over three decades in sports journalism, puts it plainly. The pressure athletes operate under is unlike almost any other profession. "There's something called a pinch test in hockey," she explains. 

"They pinch the skin to measure body fat and determine if you can train. That's the level of pressure. That's the level of rejection.”

That context should fundamentally shape how a sports PR professional operates. Every media interaction has emotional stakes that go beyond reputation management. When an athlete speaks after a loss, or navigates a question about a controversy, they are not a CEO managing a crisis. They are a human being in a high-pressure moment, often young, often not media-trained, and deeply vulnerable to how they are perceived.

The PR person needs to read the room, signalling to the journalist which questions the athlete can handle, helping them prioritise so the conversation produces real headlines rather than awkward silences. Time is always short. Goodwill has to be earned on both sides.

This is not media management in the controlling sense. It is genuine partnership. When asked whether she shares questions in advance, Rica is direct: "I refuse to, because that is unethical. But with Neha, who asks for pointers, I always do. Because that opens up communication. It helps both sides understand where you're coming from."

The distinction matters. Pointers versus questions. Collaboration versus control. That line, once crossed, damages a relationship that takes years to build.

The Clock Never Stops

The IPL context makes this vivid. A match ends at 11 PM. Something happens on the field, a dropped catch, a heated exchange, a performance that invites hard questions. The media is waiting. The athlete is exhausted, possibly dehydrated, and emotionally raw. The PR professional has perhaps twenty minutes to get a press release out and thirty minutes to manage interview access. There is no luxury of sitting with a draft, refining language, running it past a team. In sports, the news cycle moves at the speed of the game itself.

Controlling the Narrative Without Losing Credibility

Here is where a sports PR professionals may get it wrong. The impulse to control, to limit questions, manage access, write every quote,, is understandable but counterproductive.

Rica shares a telling example from the Paris Olympics. An athlete won a medal, spent hours in the anti-doping wing, and emerged at 3:30 AM to find eleven Indian journalists waiting. The PR person tried to rush things along. Rica told the athlete directly: "If eleven of us who have travelled all the way from India to Paris cannot get your time tonight, then thank you very much. Namaste. We can leave." The athlete intervened, overrode the PR person, and did the interviews.

The lesson is not that PR people should step back, but that genuine relationship management requires understanding what journalists need and respecting it, not just protecting what the client wants.

Crisis in Sport Has Its Own Shape

In sports, crisis is messier and faster than almost anywhere else in communications. The reputational stakes are intensely personal in a way that most crises rarely are.

Neha describes a situation where substandard facilities at a training camp were reported by a journalist, triggering a firestorm about how athletes were being treated. Her approach required nerve: own what went wrong, take immediate visible action, and bring media back to show the turnaround. "A genuine turnaround story, based on action, is something I can work with," she says. When the ground facts are different, it is best not to force a narrative that has no foundation. In sport, where the media cycle is brutal and emotional stakes are high, that always backfires.

The One Thing No Training Can Substitute

Both Rica and Neha, when asked what it takes to work in this space, land on the same answer almost simultaneously: you have to love sport. Not tolerate it, not see it as a vehicle for a PR career. Love it.

"It is not a desk job," Rica says. "It is a 24-by-7, seven-day job. No weekends off because all sports events culminate over Saturday and Sunday. You can only do it if you love sports as much."

Neha adds the dimension of empathy: "You need to be able to think on your feet, but also have a lot of empathy with the different stakeholders you will be dealing with."

That combination — pace, empathy, and sound judgement — is the defining quality in sports PR. And as Indian sport continues to grow, with the IPL setting new benchmarks each year and non-cricket sports finding increasingly large audiences, the demand for professionals who can bring all three will only increase.

The glamour is real but overstated. The work, as always in this profession, happens in the room nobody else sees. But in sports PR, that room is also the dressing room, the anti-doping wing, and the press pen at midnight.

Nandini Chatterjee, former chief marketing and communications officer PwC.