Today marked two big announcements (albeit very different) in the sports world – the birth of Tiger’s second child, and A-Rod admitting to using steroids.  Another recent big sports PR story was Michael Phelps pot photo. Let’s review how each was handled…

Tiger has always used his official site www.TigerWoods.com to be the source of all news related to him (ie knee surgery, rehab updates, wedding, birth of his daughter Sam, events he enters, etc.), and he really is the gold standard when it comes to owning your own news for all athletes online.

SI reported over the weekend that A-Rod failed a drug test during the 2003 season, and just minutes ago he admitted this and more during an interview with Peter Gammons of ESPN with the interview being available on ESPN.com. One check of his official site www.ARod.com, and there is no mention of the story or the admission. A honest apology in video format from A-Rod posted up on his official site might go a long way to getting fans back on his side. (Also his journal hasn’t been updated since Nov. 19, 2007 – with a previous post a year earlier in 2006, so might be time to update that or remove it)

Michael Phelps has been getting dragged through the media the past week because of his pot photo at a South Carolina party. His reps put out a standard official press statement from him, and there was the informal television interview shortly after with him from the pool, but what might have helped would have been to simply do a honest apology (it happened, was a mistake, won’t happen again, thanks for support, etc.) in a video immediately after the story broke from Michael and post it up on his official site www.swimroom.com/phelps for a short period of time. They do have his statement posted as a blog entry, but everyone knows that agents or PR reps write these things – or that is the very strong assumption so it doesn’t come across as sincere.

The official site should act as the source of all relevant information on an athlete, and using it in that way can do a lot to control positive and negative reactions to their news whatever it may be.