Oscar Pistorius was granted bail.
I doubt a soul connected to TV or the Internet has not heard about the case that Pistorius is facing so I wont rehash anything you don't know.
What I want to briefly talk about are athletes and sponsorship.
The first most obvious thing to point out is that a premeditated murder charge is big. For a sponsor to stick with any athlete, even if said athlete is found innocent, would be nothing short of a miracle when the charges involve murder.
Nike has distanced itself from Pistorius, releasing a rather reassuring and non committal statement stipulating that Pistorius is owed due process.
So does that mean if Pistorius is found not guilty that Nike would gladly have him back?
I somehow doubt it.
From Kobe Bryant's sexual assault charges, Tiger Woods philandering, and Serena Williams telling a Line Judge to shove it you no where, you see an ever growing hierarchy of public relations headaches that agents and lawyers are called upon to deal with.
Social media is even more of a headache when you think of the time when all you could do was slam a phone down on someone, or write an angry letter, calm down and not mail it.
We have gone from that to angry emails that can be CC'd and printed off to a 140 character bought of Twitter diarrhea that is not so easily retracted and can reach a huge audience.
PR lesson, if it's on the Internet, it might very well be there forever!
The Pistorius case I think will show that even if you are found innocent on a charge of murder, your sponsors are not going to want to have you hocking their wares.
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