SPORTS, CULTURE, AND CRISIS 1 in L. L. Austin and Y. Jin (Eds.) Social Media and Crisis Communication, estimated publication date January 2018. Routledge. Sports, Culture, and Financial Crisis: A cross-cultural comparison of the social media responses of struggling sports associations in the United States and the United Kingdom Audra Diers-Lawson, Ph.D. School of Public Relations & Journalism Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom audra.lawson@leedsbeckett.ac.uk Stephen M. Croucher, Ph.D. University of Jyväskylä, Finland stephen.m.croucher@jyu.fi Author Details Audra Diers-Lawson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Relations and Journalism at Leeds Beckett University. Stephen M. Croucher is a Professor of Intercultural Communication and the University of Jyväskylä. Keywords: Crisis communication, international public relations, cultural values, public relations strategy, sports organizations, economic downturns Acknowledgements: The Spring 2010 class in Research Methods at Marist College for conducting data collection and coding as a part of their course requirements. Abstract The present study provides a case comparison of crisis response strategies employed by sports organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom. In both crisis response and the broader body of corporate communications, cross-cultural comparisons of communication strategies are uncommon. Our findings have four significant implications: (1) they identify a statistically significant basis for the argument that communication strategy must be considered within a national culture context; (2) establish a comparative analysis of American and British approaches to economic crisis response; (3) provide a means to evaluate and identify other culturally-bound approaches to communications strategy; and (4) demonstrate the benefits of examining culture and crises using sports organizations.