Public-facing entertainment and sports brands do not get to separate culture from operations. The same forces that drive audience growth, fandom, and advertiser demand also compress the distance between an internal decision and a public reckoning. Take a leaked internal email that surfaces online or an ill-considered on-air remark that is clipped and shared within minutes. What might once have been handled discreetly through HR or internal review can quickly become a proxy for a company’s values, leadership, and judgment. In public-facing entertainment brands, those moments often move faster than any press release, forcing organizations to respond before the narrative hardens. “The missteps come in two different ways,” says Peter Steckelman, Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Tennis Channel. “One is avoiding responsibility altogether. The other is failing to take clear, affirmative steps to manage the fallout once something has gone wrong.”
Years spent working alongside blue chip brands and culturally visible talent have shaped a clear view of where reputational damage actually begins. In his experience, the most consequential mistakes are rarely the initial incident itself. They are the organizational reactions that follow. When a company treats a controversy as someone else’s problem, audiences read it as indifference, and employees read it as a warning. The work of repair, he argues, starts earlier and runs deeper, with leaders deciding what the brand stands for and then acting on it consistently.
The Employment Risk No Handbook Can Fully Cover
Traditional workplaces manage employment risk mostly through policies and training. Public-facing entertainment brands need all of that, plus the ability to operate in a constant feedback loop with the outside world. These are businesses where the “workplace” includes social platforms, media coverage, sponsor expectations, and fan sentiment. The environment is inherently more complex because there are two distinct populations tied to reputational outcomes. “One is the employment team and the corporate folks that drive the business,” he says. “And the other is the talent, the brand ambassadors, the public-facing side of the business.”
A manufacturing company might be able to contain an HR issue inside the building. A sports broadcaster, studio, or league office may be judged in real time by audiences who feel ownership of the product. The challenge is compounded by the fact that high-profile individuals often carry their own public identities, sometimes at odds with the brand’s positioning. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that the studio that produced the movie has the same political, social, cultural views that the actor does,” Steckelman says. Employment risk, then, is not just about compliance but about the ability to respond in a way that preserves trust.
Integrity as an Operational Practice
The first proactive step Steckelman emphasizes is integrity, not as a values statement, but as repeatable behavior. “First and foremost, demonstrate integrity,” he says. “You don’t want to tolerate conduct that harms business reputation and also harms individuals.” In entertainment and sports, inconsistent enforcement is a multiplier of risk. If employees and audiences see selective accountability, they assume the organization’s standards are negotiable. Integrity, in Steckelman’s framing, means choosing positions “that are consistent and value aligned” with the mission, then applying them across departments and personas, whether the issue involves an executive, a producer, an on-air personality, or a contracted ambassador.
That consistency matters because employment risk is rarely limited to a single incident. It becomes a pattern story. When responses are predictable and fair, they create internal stability and reduce the likelihood that a workplace conflict turns into a negative external narrative.
Know Who You Are Hiring, Partnering With, and Promoting
The second step is due diligence. “Know and understand who your talent and brand ambassadors are,” Steckelman says. Entertainment companies more than most often lean into personality as a marketing asset. A provocative public identity can be useful until it becomes the headline. Steckelman points to the need to assess reputational history and public posture as part of the initial business case, not as an afterthought.
“If you’re going to execute a film’s promotional campaign with a certain actor who has a certain political reputation, that may serve you as a marketing tool, but it may end up being a negative because of those potentially controversial positions.” This is where employment risk and business development intersect. Brands can accept some controversy, but they need to decide what kind they can carry, how it affects sponsor relationships, and what the internal culture communicates when certain behavior is treated as “good for publicity.”
Collaboration That Prevents Crisis and Committee Paralysis
The third step is collaboration, especially around messaging. Steckelman reduces it to one word: “Collaborate.” The point is not to control people. It is to prevent misalignment between the brand’s voice and the individual’s voice from turning into avoidable risk. “You want to create a partnership, messaging consistency so that everyone is aligned,” he says, whether the company is promoting a film, a sporting event, or even a social issue. This is where many organizations struggle. Steckelman has seen the pendulum swing between aggressive “synergy,” where decision-making stalls, and rigid silos, where teams protect turf and ignore downstream impact.
Too much integration creates “inertia by committee”. but pure separation produces fractured execution. The durable model is a blend, with respect for specialized functions paired with structured coordination so that content development, distribution, sales, marketing, business operations, and legal are not working at cross purposes. People know who decides what, what the escalation path is, and how the company will respond if a public-facing individual triggers reputational fallout.
AI Raises the Bar for Judgment, Not Just Efficiency
As AI tools become embedded in recruiting, monitoring, and content creation, Steckelman argues the central challenge is governance. “Number one, use common sense,” he says. That includes understanding why an AI tool is being used, what it is producing, and where its inputs come from. He highlights two risk zones. The first is recruiting: if AI narrows a candidate pool too aggressively, companies lose both talent and defensibility. “I want to make sure I get the widest selection of recruits possible,” he says, “so that I can make the best decision for my business.” The second is creative execution, where AI-generated concepts can introduce intellectual property exposure if they resemble existing work. “I want to make sure it comes to me clean,” he says, “and any intellectual property in the AI-generated outputs isn’t stolen.”
Employment Risk Is Now Brand Strategy
The stakes for employment risk in entertainment are increasing because employment issues are increasingly interpreted as brand truth. Audiences do not separate workplace conduct from product credibility. Neither do sponsors and partners. Steckelman’s lens is that the goal is not perfection. It is recovery and trust maintenance. When something goes wrong, the organization has to “take proactive steps” and recenter on mission, reminding internal and external stakeholders that “no one person is greater than the business or the mission of the company.” That approach changes the equation. Employment risk stops being a defensive legal function and becomes a form of brand stewardship. The best organizations treat integrity, diligence, and collaboration as part of how they grow and succeed.
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