The role of psychological resilience and sports media in improving performance and coping with competitive pressures among professional athletes

As professional athletes are exposed to more and more challenges and pressures, psychological resilience becomes an important aspect that helps them conquer the challenges. Meanwhile, sports media is a two-sided weapon since it can be both an asset and an extra burden on the athletes. The connection between psychological resilience and sports media in enhancing athletic performance and managing competition is the basis of this research problem. This study seeks to examine how psychological resilience and sports media can help in stimulating performance and counteracting competitive demands among professional sportsmen. It achieves this by determining the role of psychological strength in enhancing the athletic performance, examining the effects of sports media (positive and negative) on the psychological state of the athletes, investigating the interaction between psychological strength and sports media to cope with the competitive demands, and the recommendations to ensure that the media is used to support the mental state of the athletes. The significance of the research is in its intention to reveal the psychological and media aspects affecting athletic performance, especially in this day and age, when the demands on the professional players of football and futsal athletes are on the rise. It further attempts to illustrate the theoretical importance of the issue by adding new value to scientific literature on the conceptualisation of psychological resilience in sports and providing novel knowledge on the contribution of sports media to the psychological performance of athletes. The usefulness can be found in helping coaches and administrators work out ways to help athletes psychologically, as well as direct sports media to have positive practices that favour athletes. The researcher used a descriptive design based on correlational and applied the study to a sample of 120 professional athletes in the Iraqi Stars League in the 2024-2025 season, where a scale of psychological resilience and a scale of sports media were used. The hypothetical results demonstrated that there was a significant positive correlation between psychological resilience and sports media and between enhanced performance and diminished stress. The study suggests that there is a necessity to incorporate training programs to instil psychological resilience in the sportsmen, and to mobilise the beneficial nature of sports media in assisting the players, thus making them better equipped to manage the challenges and attain high degrees of accomplishment.