That’s a lot of certainty, so I assume you have objective evidence to support it?
Come on, get real. Skipping a 15-minute talk isn’t going to make any noticeable difference. Hell, I could just as easily argue it might help some athletes - after all, we can all name athletes who thrived on spotlights and attention.
…mental illness isn’t just “some difficulty.” You are really going out of your way here not to mention depression or social anxiety or mental illness. If you think that granting accommodation for mental illness will give the player a competitive advantage then can you quantify exactly how much of an advantage would be?
I think you are starting to get it.
I suspect many players have tried this going back decades, but the tournaments have held their ground. Perhaps this time will be different. I hope it is.
If you have a cite it’s not in their collective contracts then post it and we can close the thread as resolved.
I don’t need to, because you know press conferences are not part of the SPORT itself. They may be a contractual obligation the athletes sign on for, but you know what a SPORT is, and the difference between a SPORT and activities that take place concerning the business part of the industry.
I think arguably, this was a more compelling argument 20-something years ago.
In olden times, the best way for athletes to connect with their fans was through the newsmedia/sportsmedia. A star wants to humanize themself - talk to a sports magazine. A fan wants to read about/see video of a star off the field - the newspaper or nightly news. A team/agency wants to reach the whole country/world at once, get all of the reporters from all of the outlets into a room and talk to them all at once…a press conference.
But now, the sports fans who care about this type of thing are following the players and teams on facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, and/or tiktok (or even other places that I don’t know about) which are updated frequently - probably even more often and definitely with more facts/details/anecdotes/photos/quotes than people ever got before. All of which keep interest up - because it’s more than ever. Right now, arguably, the sports journalists who travel to press conferences and/or write articles based on press conference footage really, really, really need them to justify their employment. Fans themselves, not so much.
I think it is telling that even among the people in the thread who think athletes should be forced to participate in press conferences, the majority don’t watch or otherwise pay attention to them.
Can your boss ask you to answer a very important client’s questions?
Whatever you might think of interviews with the press, it’s not the same thing at all as illegal workplace harassment; actions that would get an employer fined or even prosecuted, and it’s a bit dishonest to keep trying to equate them.
Well that’s probably because there are two meanings of required being used in this thread, and only one is relevant to the actual debate.
One is whether the employer (the sporting federation, or club) can “require” (i.e. mandate) that an athlete take part in interviews.
My own view is “yes” but of course with exceptions for exceptional cases. It should be the same as all the other hoops that athletes are required to jump through (pun somewhat intended).
The other is whether press interaction is “required” (i.e. beneficial) to the sport.
I think it probably is, but it’s tangential to the discussion.
That would be illegal.
What was being asked of Osaka is not illegal at all.
I see nothing wrong with a contract for an event including talking to the press.
If you do not want to talk to the press, for whatever reason, then don’t accept that agreement. If you are a big enough deal in that industry then try to negotiate a different deal.
But don’t agree to something and then later back-out and try to make the other party seem the bad guy. She agreed to something and then made a huge fuss about it all.
This is on her and not the people/organization that expected her to do the things she agreed to do.
The agreement also specifies the athlete’s financial obligations if they do not talk to the press. If the French Open does not like that, for whatever reason, they shouldn’t have accepted the agreement.
She didn’t make a huge fuss. She said she isn’t going to do pressers, and would accept the stipulated fine. The French Open, and the other Majors, made a huge fuss, by publicly threatening her career. If they hadn’t reacted that way to her statements, nobody would be talking about this now.
This is because skipping a presser is a ho hum event, while threatening to ban the world’s #2 player from Grand Slam events is anything but. It is not and never has been about Tennis having this as a part of their contract with the players, it’s about a thoroughly disproportionate response to violating that part of the contract.
Yeah. That’s how agreements work between two parties. Both lay out their requirements and agree to those requirements.
No.
She refused to talk to the press.
Then they fined her.
Then it became news.
She did not say, “I won’t talk to the press, I get that is a problem for you, here is $15,000.”
Let’s get it right.
#1, she announced that she wouldn’t be doing “press” and acknowledges that she will be fined. link This was news
#1a, she is unable to pre-pay the fine, as you suggest she should have, because the fine is “up to” $20k, at the discretion of the tournament, see below how that worked out.
#2, The Open fines her $15k, (note this is DOUBLE what Novak Djokovic was fined for skipping a presser after being DQed for hitting a judge in the throat with a ball at the US Open last September) AND threatens to suspend her for the other Majors if she continues to skip the conferences. link This was also news.
#3, She withdraws.
She did not make a fuss about the dollar amount, nor refuse to pay as far as I can see.
If it was just for the sport of playing tennis they are free to play themselves to exhaustion at any court on the planet.
the reason there are contractual obligations is because this is a SPECTATOR SPORT with a paying audience. The people writing the contracts believe interviews are an important part of the franchise.
That’s absolutely correct, but those things are not the sport itself. Again, if you will read the point that was under discussion, it’s very clear what was being discussed was performance in the actual sport.
The French Open made several unforced errors, but this might have been the worst.
You can’t set rules, including penalties, and then decide after the fact you don’t like the rules. The rules were that if a player skipped a press conference they could be fined up to $20,000 (or 20000 euros, I’m not sure which.) They levied the fine, and Osaka paid it, and THEN they decide that’s not enough? Well, sorry, guys, but you created the rules, and set the price. You cannot decide later your own rules weren’t strict enough. Osaka FOLLOWED the rules as written.
My, my. Compare the sympathies of certain posters have with Bad Boys vs Bad Girls
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/djokovic-defaulted-from-us-open-for-hitting-line-judge/
And tell me this is not misogyny writ large.
I agree with this and hope there’s a legal rendering in her favor on this issue.
Yes but the “actual sport” is not relevant to the thread. It’s the monetization of the sport and the contractual obligations that are relevant.
It’s also the management of those obligations. Such as when a white male player hits an official with a ball, gets DQed and fined, then decides not to face the media. He gets fined $7,500 and told “see you next tournament”, and a few months later a non-white female player skips a presser after a routine 1st round win, gets fined $15,000 and told their career is in jeopardy if they don’t fall in line.
Again, it’s fine to have media access part of the contract, it’s not fine to bludgeon your players into line.
Kinda. But this is really the heart of the issue. As stated upthread, the problem with major sports is that they have become a hybrid between a sport and a circus, and as a top-level player your only options are to play against people who are massively below your level and never win major tournaments even though you maybe could, or participate in the circus.
The peak French tennis tournament is the French Open. There is no other pinnacle level tennis tournament in France for people who just want to play tennis.
Clearly you are heavily invested in the circus (business) side (reference your language e.g. “franchise”).
The situation creates an inevitable tension between the integrity of the sport, and the business. Those interested in the business pay lip service to the integrity of the sport but their true colours show through things like this -
This player (a) increased publicity and (b) didn’t threaten any long term problem with the business. So his objectively worse behaviour was seen as less problematic.
No, I’m just pointing out the reality of it. I already said upthread I could care less about post-event interviews.
I’m not sure I get your point. Are people who are not in a tournament obligated to participate in press conferences?
In addition to the reddit cites I provided regarding NBA press conferences, if people didn’t care about press conferences, SportsCenter wouldn’t show them live after big games.
I’ll state, I enjoy press conferences. For instance I REALLY wanted to hear what Trae Young was thinking when he took a bow after putting the dagger into the Knicks (and his response was fantastic).
Point is, it looks like the non-white female player is a lot more obligated than the white male player. I wonder why that is?
It also looks like the obligation has a lot more to do with forcing obedience than it has to do with the importance of connecting with the fan base via the media.
Which ties in to the last bit of the point. There is nothing wrong with having contractual obligations, and pursuing contractual remedies when those obligations are not met. What is wrong is the capricious use of those remedies, and threats to a person’s career, over an issue that has, heretofore, been relatively minor in the grand scheme.