She is an entertainer performing before a live audience and is subjected to cheering and booing. There’s nothing particularly different in a 10 minute interview from the feedback she gets from the crowd.
Refusing to do interviews is no different contractually than walking off the court because she is worried she will be booed in the next set or throwing a temper tantrum at a judge.
Every job is stressful. Claiming mental illness in order to pick and choose what part of the job you want to do is not how the rest of the world works. In her case, she has the ability of hiring people to coach her through interviews just as she has coaches for her tennis skills.
I personally don’t see the value in player interviews. But they take up air time that needs to be filled.
Sorry, I don’t buy that “Showing up to a press conference” is something that makes a measurable difference in athletic performance. That’s taking the notion of competitive fairness to levels of absurdity which, I cannot help but notice, are applied nowhere else. They don’t force all the players to drink the same sports drinks or all fly the same level of luxury on their way to the tournament, though surely those have just as much an effect.
If commitments away from the court made a significant dent to athletic performance Osaka shouldn’t be as good as she is; she’s in very high demand.
I didn’t write “perform.” I wrote “Athletic performance,” a phrase that means the degree of success of one’s execution of the actual sport. That was very obviously what @filmore and I were referring to there.
They’re not paid to play sports. there’s little monetary value in that because the act accomplishes nothing. They’re paid to put people in seats. they’re in the entertainment business and that is paid for by advertisement. They could just as well be playing poker.
The reason this is important is they’re paid for air time and that is spelled out in their contract.
That will come as an enormous surprise to the people writing up the contracts, the great majority of which is concerned with the athletes being paid to play sports. They are, in fact, paid to play sports. The fact that this is being counted on to garner viewers doesn’t change the fact that athletes are paid to play - and the camera guy is paid to operate the camera, the line judge is paid to judge in/out calls, and the travel secretary is paid to make travel arrangements. Come on, you know how jobs work.
That said, I beg you, actually read the point @filmore was making that I was responding to.
Actually, Osaka and the other players are paid nothing at all by the French Open for “air time.” They are paid for their performance on the court. Look up how they get paid - it’s prize money based on how well they do in the tournament. If you win the whole shebang, they pay you 1.4 million euros. If you make it to the quarterfinals before you lose, you get a hair over a quarter million. If you qualify for the main draw but get bounced in your first match you get sixty grand. One quarterfinal winner is not paid more than another if they spend extra time at the presser or give a funnier answer to a question.
I can say with 100% certainty that attending press conferences generally have a negative effect on an athlete’s performance. If it was a positive influence, coaches would incorporate them into an athlete’s training routine to improve their play. If nothing else, the time spent in the presser takes away from time with the coach where they could be going over training films, strategy, etc. The presser and other events are things required by the tournament. Consistency in stuff like drinks or travel luxury are not required by the tournament and are therefore up to the players discretion to find what works for them.
The presser is not just some random thing the tournament throws together to make the athlete’s journey more challenging. Even though I totally agree it’s superfluous to the actual game of tennis, it can’t be denied that press coverage helps the sport’s exposure and therefore revenues. There’s no way that multi-billion dollar media conglomerates are throwing away their money by sending reporters to pressers just for the fun of giving the athletes a hard time. They see some value in these events and that value translates into media dollars pumped into tennis and ultimately to the players through these tournaments. Certainly the game can survive without them, but likely it would mean the sport would contract to a lower level of popularity and prize money.
She is an entertainer performing before a live audience and is subjected to cheering and booing. There’s nothing particularly different in a 10 minute interview from the feedback she gets from the crowd
The people writing contracts are fully aware of where the revenue comes from as do the athletes. It comes from spectators who pay to watch. It doesn’t matter how good the athletes are if seats aren’t filled.
…I shared earlier in the thread my struggles with depression and social anxiety. On how am able to post here on the Straight Dope fine, no problems. But the process of responding to a comment on Facebook caused me so much distress that I had to hire somebody to do it for me.
Can you walk me through the mechanics here for me? Is there anything particularly different between responding to someone here and responding to someone on Facebook? Can you explain why I can do one of these things easily but the other distresses me and makes me physically ill?
But we can make accomodation for mental illness. Many workplaces do that now, others are obligated to do that by law. Why should tennis be any different?
Stress is different to depression, which is different to social anxiety. These are not analogous.
Mental illness is an illness and in the “rest of the world” should be treated seriously. In the rest of the world you should grant accommodation for mental illness and those same standards should apply in tennis.
It isn’t a matter of “coaching.” That isn’t how depression and social anxiety works.
Sure. Just as you hired someone to help you deal with your social issues the same thing is available to people in the public’s eye. They hire professionals who do nothing but train them on how to handle it. If she is mentally ill then that help may need to come from a Psychiatrist
The difference is she is getting paid and this is part of the contract.
…you haven’t explained the mechanics on why I can reply to a post just fine here on the Straight Dope but I can’t do the same on Facebook.
Care to try again?
I didn’t hire a professional to train me on how to deal with posting on Facebook. I hired a professional to speak on my behalf.
Is that the solution you see here? That Osaka should be able to send a representative to speak on her behalf?
You can’t turn depression on and off with a switch. Osaka probably is getting help with working with her issues. But getting help isn’t a magical solution.
Employers can make accommodation for illness in their contracts. Parties can re-negotiate contracts. Contracts shouldn’t force people to do things that are illegal, or immoral, or cause them physical and/or emotional distress.
I haven’t seen anyone say that no press conferences mean no viewership. It would be safe to assume the promoters believe it’s part of the overall event. I have no interest in it but then I’m not emotionally invested in the athletes. There are certainly fans out there who are greatly interested in the athletes and watch the post-play interviews.
One difference here is that the athletes are competing based on ability, and making accommodations for some difficulties in sport may confer an advantage which allows one competitor to win over the other. That’s not the same as in most workplace allowances. Like if someone needs to have a desk by the window for their seasonal affective disorder, it doesn’t really make any difference to the other employees. For a comparable workplace example for sports, you’d need to have an example where there was a competitive advantage.
For example, if an employee needs to take breaks or work slower, the company may make allowances by having their quota be lower than other employees. But the sports connection would be if the employees with higher quotas get dinged on performance reviews and fired because they don’t make their harder to complete higher quota while the employee with easier to reach lower quota gets raises and bonuses for making their lower quota. That’s the reality of competing in sports. If one person wins, the other person loses. So making exceptions and allowances for a person’s limitations may mean that they have an advantage over another competitor. It doesn’t really matter if it’s physical or mental limitations. If an athlete has flareups of arthritis that makes it difficult to play, they just have to figure something out on their own. The sport won’t schedule matches to correspond to when when flareups subside. A workplace can typically make benign accommodations for something like arthritis, but that’s not true in sports.
But you do understand the athletes are the ones in the enterprise who are paid to play the sport, right?
Giving short press conferences isn’t part of the sport of tennis and being excused from one is not an athletic advantage. It’s not like Osaka asked to get three serves per point.