Crisis communication and events reputation: the moderator role of the distributed leadership

Sports events, plagued by crises including corruption, violence, drug problems, discrimination, sex trafficking, and more, have witnessed a dire impact on their reputation over the last four decades. This heightens the urgency for effective leadership to successfully navigate and manage these multifaceted challenges. However, we still know little about how team leaders shape behaviors in the sport events industry. Drawing on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), this article produces novel theoretical insights and test a model in which distributed leadership foster conditions to minimize the impacts of crisis responsibility on the event reputation. Attribution of crisis responsibility, distributed leadership, and event reputation were assessed based on data collected at one time point over 2 months from multiple events of managers in Saudi Arabia.