Book Review: Sport Public Relations and Communication by Maria Hopwood, James Skinner, and Paul Kitchin

Abstract

Public Relations and Communication. Maria Hopwood, James Skinner, and Paul Kitchin. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. 288 pp. $53.95 pbk.Sport Public Relations and Communication is a well-rounded book with a number of good but only a few great qualities. The purpose of the book, according to its authors, is to provide a concise guide for to apply public relations theory to the sports industry, or to demonstrate how the principles of public relations and communications can be successfully applied in practice within a context.The book is a response to what the authors see as a gap in the scholarly work on public relations and communications in the sports marketing and management field. Maria Hopwood has taught at universities in Britain and Australia; James Skinner is head of the Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Management at Griffith University in Australia; and Paul Kitchin is a lecturer in management at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.Generally formatted as a textbook, with themed chapters that include definitions of key terms and discussion questions, the book also includes full references and some original or emerging ideas that could be helpful for scholarly research. Ultimately, however, this book is most clearly suited for a classroom setting, perhaps an upperlevel or graduate course. As a book geared toward classroom use, it provides coverage of general public relations theory that is often introductory in nature, suitable for public relations theory novices. For those more experienced with the theoretical underpinnings of public relations, however, the utility of this theory review lies in its contextualization in the sports industry. While other anthologies may provide more in-depth explanations of major theoretical movements in the field of public relations, this work provides a precisely directed overview of those theories. This contextualization and specificity may prove useful to students and scholars looking for shortcut applications of general public relations theory to sports industry issues and questions.To that end, the coverage of major public relations theories and issues is fairly broad in Public Relations and Communication. Both excellence theory and relationship management theory are outlined by the end of the third chapter. There are also chapters devoted to important public relations issues like crisis communication, corporate social responsibility (CSR), new media, and international public relations. In each case, the topic is filtered through and applied to a sports industry lens.In fact, the text sees sports public relations as a different animal than other kinds of PR. This may be best illustrated by Hopwood's chapter on Sport Marketing Public Relations (SMPR), in which she argues that sport needs to be approached with an SMPR rather than with marketing mindset. …