The UCLA incident last week was not the first time visiting teams have had problems while on tour in China. Here’s a look at what can happen when things go south and how teams should respond when trying to manage a crisis.
Earlier this year, reigning English Premier League champions Chelsea FC visited China for the first time in nine years, eager to make some commercial inroads in the world’s most populous market. Following a comprehensive 3-0 drubbing of Arsenal at Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium, you might think that Chelsea was set to take their global profile to another level.
You’d be wrong.
In the build-up to the game, little-known Brazilian winger Kenedy had made the mistake of posting two offensive messages on Instagram, the first insulting China in general, while the second poked fun at a sleeping security guard.
Football fans are pretty similar all over the world, so clearly they weren’t going to let Kenedy off the hook easily when he came on as a substitute for the final 20 minutes. The boos he received accounted for a large part of the next day’s headlines, with the story receiving mainstream coverage – including some very critical op-eds in Chinese media – with minimal coverage of the game itself.