Naomi Osaka withdraws from French Open
I'm a huge fan of Naomi, but I think he press stance, and now withdrawal from a slam, is a mistake. Media criticism, as well as praise, comes with the territory of being a top athlete. I don't quite recall any particularly vicious media leading up to the tournament. But, she absolutely must learn to deal with the media if she aspires to be the best women's player in the world.
Hopefully she can find some solace and come back when ready. Not much else to it honestly.
What’s the backstory for her media boycott? Honest question, and please no snark replies.
Shades of Marshawn Lynch, from what I've read. She doesn't like microphones and cameras shoved in her face, nor mobs of people demanding answers to pointless questions. It infringes upon her ability to perform at her best.
Not really the same thing at all.
Maybe that's true for Marshawn.
Naomi told you EXACTLY why in her own words. There is no need to speculate. Just read her damn post and she explains it pretty clearly.
According to her tweet, a combo of depression and social anxiety. She says she would have been willing to do a conference after the tournament.
She says she has severe anxiety and depression and wants to be left alone. So why can't everyone just leave her the fuck alone? Her job is to play tennis, not talk about tennis.
Her job is whatever she wants it to be. tournament organizers jobs are to make big money. Doing the pointless dog and pony show with reporters is part of that as it helps with the marketing element of the tournament. That, in turn, helps make the sport more popular which leads to larger purses and more opportunity for endorsements for players. If she doesn’t want to partake in the responsibilities tournament organizers ask of her, she doesn’t have to enter the tournament, but once entered, she has to take on all the responsibilities.
You're spot on as it comes with the territory of most every sport.
Just hope she can fight through whatever it is that she is going through and come out stronger both on and off the court as she is a HUGE talent!
4godking 15 -- tree 0
The tournament mandates access to the press, so her job, if she's in the tournament, is to play tennis AND talk about tennis.
I worked in a supermarket for a long time, and I also have anxiety and some depression. But I couldn't tell my bosses I wouldn't interact with the customers and expect to keep the job.
That said, good for her to have the strength to do what she needs to do. Many people think these conditions equate to weakness, without understanding the strength that's sometimes required to face each day and situation. Hopefully, she can find ways to manage these difficulties, even if it means playing less.
I fall more in the do your job category but I can’t imagine how tough it would be if this is paralyzing for her.
It seems like some middle ground or compromise would be good but I’m not sure how you could do it. Maybe the time off is what she really needs. I’m sure it takes some courage to shut it down.
She seems to have handled it well and will have plenty of support should she return.
A more sensible and humane approach would be to make exceptions when someone has a diagnosed disorder. Forcing someone in her mental state to make that choice is unnecessarily cruel.
Is it diagnosed? And, we all have to make choices. I don't think it's cruel to tell her to do the press conferences, take the fines, or don't play. She's obviously been making the choice for 3 years. At this tournament her choice was to no longer play. I simply don't think the rules should change (make exceptions) for one player.
Perhaps the rules shouldn’t change for one person, but this was a missed opportunity. I think she would have been ok doing some sort of media, perhaps in a more controlled environment or after the tournament ended. And now the tournament is missing a great competitor, which surely can’t help either
What kind of question is that?
No one here would or even should know the details of her diagnosis.
But the tournament doctors should be able to find out.
The idea that rules are rules is bs. Exception are always made. And maybe it would actually help her recover if she were just allowed to play the game she loves without the extras. That's at least what she seemed to believe. But again the professionals should have accessed that.
I definitely think in general society does not take mental health issues serious enough. Too often its scoffed at and belittled.
BNP Parabas is the primary sponsor and is paying the singles winners 1.6M Euros (men and women each) and a total purse of 38M Euros. So, I can't blame them for wanting to squeeze every soundbite possible out of this when they're spending that kind of money.
But at the end of the day, Naomi Osaka also impresses me with her bold statement by passing up 6-7 figures for this event alone, not to mention possible endorsement fallout.
i take your meaning, and yes, it's part of her "contract" (such as it is). but i'm not sure it truly affects the "marketing element of the tournament." does the french open (or any of the other grand slam events) actually lose coverage or viewership or sponsors if naomi osaka doesn't do press?
i don't think they do. people that love tennis won't decide to watch or not watch based on whether she's doing press. casual fans are more likely to watch if great players (which she is) are playing. this just seems completely counterproductive, the product of a french press that doesn't like american athletes, thank you very much.
press conferences don't move the needle. great tennis does.
Press conferences increase the notoriety, profile, and popularity of the sport and its stars. The lack of media availability may not hurt a particular tournament, immediately. But continued lack of media availability hurts the sport and its ability to attract fans, sponsors in the long run. Press conferences allow fans to get a glimpse into the personalities of the athletes. Why do you think men's tennis in America has been at its nadir for the better part of 20 years, while American women's tennis has never been more popular? The men have no relatable stars, while the women have had a run of stars and personalities.
the american men have no relatable stars because they're not very good. their press conference availability has nothing to do with it.
I gotta disagree here. Do pre-event press conferences help each sport market themselves? Sure. But they're a minor part of it at most. I can think of more shitty questions ("how long have you been a black quarterback?" to Doug Williams) than memorable answers (zero) from the past several decades of pre-Super Bowl interviews.
While they're an opportunity to push the sport, to the vast majority of people they're just background noise. I suspect the French Open and most other sports could replace these sorts of press conferences with almost any kind of other marketing activity and they'd be fine.
The post-event press conferences can be a little more interesting--but she said was willing to do those.
She’s not a U.S. citizen by the way.
that's true, and it was a lazy comment on my part. i don't honestly think that this is anti-american sentiment in any meaningful way.
i will say that i believe this is an almost entirely media-fueled "controversy," i don't think that tennis fans - even super-casual ones, that only watch the semis or finals of the grand slam events - care if literally anyone at all does pre- or post-match press.
they will tune in on saturday to watch the women's final if there's a charismatic player like osaka in it; if she plays well, they might go buy some osaka-branded merchandise. she'll still get endorsements. none of that gets moved one bit based on press conferences, or whether she gets quoted in an espn story.
I mean, what the French Open has accomplished is removed the #2 ranked player in tennis from their major tournament because they wouldn't allow someone who claims to be suffering from anxiety and depression to refrain from what is typically inane questions from media members that virtually nobody will remember the answers to in a day. That's going to hurt their viewership and fan interest far more than the media availability issue Osaka created. And that doesn't even get into the sometimes-wildly inappropriate questions media ask players during these tournaments that are designed only to create controversy and get eyeballs for the reporters and aren't really good-faith questions.
I agree that Osaka has to deal with the rules as they are laid out; she paid a $15k fine and will miss a tournament and likely suffer in the world rankings. But endorsements and bigger purses come from having exciting tournaments with the best players in the world competing, and right now the French Open hurt themselves on that front because the media has an outsized view of their value in sports.
This right here! You'd swear "the media" was the actual big ticket. What is Mel Kipers/ Dan Orlovsky's/ Steven A Smith's actual talent???
I get the Kiper / Steven A hate, but come on - Orlovsky has already showed the world his talent
If she doesn't want to deal with the professional aspects of the sport, she can always stick to amateur tennis and we'll watch her once every 4 years in the Olympics.
At the end of the day, without fans, sports wouldn't exist. And the Media is the middle man from the fan to the game. It's a very dangerous precedent to set to either play favorite with your star, or let all these athletes out of obligations. Because soon the fans won't care about these players and will easily check out.
The media is the middle man in the sense that they provide the medium by which to view the event. No one - and I mean no one - gives two shits about press availability except for sports reporters whose jobs it is to care. They wouldn't lose any fans and wouldn't gain any either.
I believe her when she says that she's dealing with anxiety. This may be compounded by the fact that the media in Japan will often ask her to give soundbites in their language, which she is less comfortable speaking than English. And then she hasn't performed that well on clay and probably figured she'd be facing a lot of questions about that.
That said, this...
Her job is to play tennis, not talk about tennis.
...is a little naïve. Pro tennis is a big business and requires a certain degree of media accessibility. The media is part of the machine that generates publicity for these stars, which makes them a lot of money.
Somehow she has to find a way to work with this.
"Her job is to play tennis, not talk about tennis."
Her job is to sell tickets and draw ratings. It's wild to me how many athletes don't realize that the only reason they make money doing their sport is because people watch it on TV and pay a lot of money to go see it in person.
To be honest, I sympathize with Naomi Osaka and Marshawn Lynch et al on this topic. Constant, forceful media "interviews" of top athletes are among the most useless things any of the "journalists" in question could be doing. I don't see what's accomplished by the practice of mandating athlete availability to the media.
What does anyone get out of this?
Yup most questions are generic and not all that illuminating. when an athlete does give a candid response or say something jokingly the media will twist their words and make it a “thing”. Their utility has long since passed.
Also some reporters always must ask the edgy tough questions which are mean spirited. Not the softball questions. It’s the tough ones that likely cause stress. I don’t blame her for avoiding those.
Part of the job is to participate in the press coverage that drives fan attention which draws advertising dollars which puts money in the athletes’ pockets.
I sympathize with not wanting a million cameras and microphones in your face though. Seems like they should do something like what movie stars do to promote movies. Every reporter gets like five minutes of one on one interviewing and then the next person come in and asks the same stupid, boring questions
Do you think postgame interviews draw fan attention? I dunno, I literally can't recall a postgame presser -- ever.
What's interesting is that thoughtful journalists (e.g. Zach Lowe at ESPN, Robert Mays at Grantland, etc) seem to be able to have good quotes (presumably from good interviews) when they do long, interesting deep-dives. I get the sense that nobody likes the pointless nature of post-game questions. Like,
Q: "Why do you think you didn't tonight?"
A: "You know, we could've done better stuffing the run."
Who is that for?
I pretty much think athletes need to realize that the media is an ever-present part of their job and t's not ever going away. Nearly all of them do, really. But journalism might be the absolute least self-aware profession in the world right now. They ask incredibly stupid questions that nobody cares to hear, close ranks around their own and never admit to having (or causing) any problems whatsoever, and can always find room for the Rob Parkers of the world in the profession. And not one person's life is ever made better by the halftime coach interview.
I'm looking for a Lloyd Carr gif...
I remember all the shit that Lloyd got for his comment about the going-into-halftime question being stupid. Thing was, I had absolutely no problem with him saying it, because I thought he was right. His honesty was a refreshing change from the canned answers like "We'll have to make adjustments at halftime" or some other inane crap.
And I've watched thousands of hours of sports in my life. I can't ever remember tuning in because I was really interested in the post-game interview (or the pre-game show, for that matter.) If they eliminated both, I'd be fine with it. I tune in for the game.
I absolutely remember post games but that’s besides the point.
Those pressers are for beat writers to get quotes for their articles
It’s advertising sponsor money. Fans generally don’t care. Players don’t. Journalists just there for headlines.
But without the ad money, the revenue suffers. It’s all tangled up.
I don’t get people calling these press conferences “pointless”. They wouldn’t happen if they were losing money for the media outlets, tournament, sponsors, etc. they’re done because apparently there ARE people that DO care about them.
Well, fuck those people. Get this mindless pursuit of profit out of here.
I’ve got bad news for you about how the economy works
i reject the premise.
sponsorship money - either on the athlete level or event level - will not go away because naomi osaka does or does not do press conferences. it just won't.
mercedes will still buy ad space on the broadcast, and nike will still put their logo on her kit. you know this is true. want proof?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/business/naomi-osaka-nike-sponsors/index.html
Kind of hard to have empathy for a millionaire, professional athlete that knowingly places themselves in these situations for the public to watch and critique.
What does the amount of money she makes have to do with anything?
You ruined your whole shitty argument right there.
Maybe the whole part where her enormous earnings are tied indirectly tied towards her performance and marketing herself via.....interviews. I don't see her turning down those 6 figure endorsements where she'll be promoting something, do you?
Try to use some logic next time instead of being a simpleton
The question as I understood it is- why is your capacity for empathy in any way related to someone's income?
I think this was already thoroughly answered in the original comment. She willingly put herself in this situation. The money comes in because she has made millions and likely doesn't need to play tennis and she's still set for life.
So, PO isaying someone, who is already pretty set for life financially, knowingly put themselves into a position where they'll have to be interviewed, then backs out because they don't want to be interviewed.
So, it's hard to have empathy because there is little to no material effect on her, and she brought it on herself. Easier to have some empathy if this tournament was how they were going to avoid foreclosure on a house and being homeless, brothers emergency surgery, etc.
This line of thinking is so ass backwards.
You're acting like it's me saying, I'll give you $10,000 for letting me punch you square in the face, every time...another $10K.
Then you complaining that your face hurts and you want to stop and me not having empathy for your forehead.
Only in this instance, her forehead is her fucking BRAIN you morons!
You don't go into it thinking it's going to take a toll on your mental health...you go into my face punching challenges knowing damn well that shit is going to hurt.
But yall idiots are out here acting like it's the same damn thing.
honestly? based on her statements, i'm guessing she WOULD turn down some of those endorsements if the cost of getting such endorsements was unlimited press availability.
a really smart company - let's call them "schnike" - doesn't care, and back up her unwillingness to face what she experiences as a hostile press. a dumb company - let's call them "the french open" - pushes her out in front of the press, at the potential cost of losing her entirely. which they did.
according to wikipedia, she's made just shy of $20 million in prize money (note: exclusive of endorsements) in her pro career, almost all of it since her breakthrough in 2018. that's a gigantic pile of money that she would have made without a single press conference. she'd be fine.
but - again - suggesting that her endorsements will disappear because she doesn't want to do press is demonstrably false. not a single one of her endorsements has backed away as a result of this supposed controversy.