Soccer leagues around the globe are being savaged by COVID-19

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/09/2020 (2150 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Not to pile on — goodness knows 2020 has heaped misery upon misery — but we’re in trouble. 

That is, those of us who follow sports out of either passion or diversion, and folks whose livelihoods depend on sports either directly or indirectly, have a few things to worry about at the outset of autumn.

Will a second near-global lockdown, should it come, interrupt those league seasons already underway and, in the case of North America’s major sports, prevent them from even starting? Will we be back in stadiums and arenas at pre-pandemic levels before (forget 2021) 2022 or even 2023? Will clubs and divisions already so close to the brink be pushed over the edge and into non-existence without gate revenue?

Will the sporting landscape at any point, in any way, resemble what it was B.C. (Before COVID-19), and if it doesn’t, what will it look like?

These are difficult questions, and while there’s a certain luxury in asking them they’re also part of the bigger, more general picture as the coronavirus continues.

Given that Europe tends to be a few weeks ahead of this continent in both virus trends and risk-management measures, we can look across the pond and reasonably expect what’s happening there to arrive on these shores before too long.

Folks, it doesn’t look good. We’re already in the midst of a resurgence of springtime-level COVID-19 infections, just as the likes of England, Italy and Spain began to experience mid-summer.

England’s Premier League, which kicked off earlier this month, recently postponed its planned reintroduction of in-stadium supporters, and Italy’s Serie A, for now, is admitting only 1,000 fans per match — financially, a meaningless number.

In Spain’s Primera Division, a scheme to begin the schedule with 30 per cent attendance was shelved, and players still aren’t permitted to use the facility dressing rooms.

The Bundesliga and Ligue 1 remain outliers, although the German top flight is limiting capacity to 20 per cent and will once again close stadiums to supporters if infection rates hit 35 per 100,000. Other, non-sporting social gatherings are currently limited to five people.

In France, 5,000 fans can watch matches in person, but probably not for long. Last Friday the country reported a daily record number of cases, breaking its previous mark set 24 hours before. The entire city of Marseille has been shut down.

In a tone-deaf but telling statement, the Premier League on Tuesday chided its country’s new public health measures, writing to the British government that “the football economy is unsustainable without (fans in attendance).” The missive also pointed out that Premier League clubs lost more than £700 million last term and are currently bleeding more than £100 million per month.

It added: “Fans in stadiums will be as safe or even safer than at any other public activity currently permitted.”

That was true for maybe a day, before the government imposed new restrictions on pubs, once again encouraged employees to work from home and raised the pandemic alert level to 4, indicating that coronavirus transmission is “high or rising exponentially.”

The hard truth of the matter is that large swaths of the economies of most countries are more likely to introduce a second and doubly punishing lockdown than to ease COVID-19 measures at sporting events. Those events are, themselves, more likely to be paused or cancelled a second time than to entertain a meaningful number of observers in the flesh.

There is also the very real risk that even more athletes and club personnel will test positive for the virus, forcing their teams to stop playing.

It’s already happening.

On Tuesday, a Carabao Cup tie between Leyton Orient and Tottenham Hotspur was called off after several Orient players returned positive tests, triggering the immediate shuttering of their Brisbane Road stadium and training ground. Cynically, the O’s owner suggested smaller clubs like his would now avoid testing players so as to remain in operation — literally in operation.

Without gate receipts — something Winnipeggers know well, given the cancellation of the CFL season — many clubs simply cannot function, and they especially covet high-profile cup matches at home to elite-level opposition. In other words, it’s the community, family clubs that will be hit hardest by another lockdown, just as it’s the working poor and vulnerable populations who will feel, and have been feeling, the burden the most.

Post-pandemic, tragically, a lot of small, local clubs — perhaps entire leagues — just won’t exist anymore, their once-charming stadiums abandoned and overgrown in a sort of dystopian landscape. They’ll be lost, like countless neighbourhood businesses who barely survived the first lockdown and wouldn’t make it through a second.

Like every other industry and every population group, football and football fans are hoping that a vaccine will restore the sport to something at least resembling what it previously looked like. But a magic bullet, or magic jab in this case, will likely only benefit the 2021-22 campaign, and Major League Soccer, for example, will be more than halfway through its season by the time the shot is ready.

By then, many clubs around the world will have gone bankrupt or sought creditor protection. Those that survive, like other businesses that are sufficiently moneyed to endure another year of this, will be the industry behemoths, a reality that will mirror the super-domination of major corporations.

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Of course, national governments could step into save community clubs and lower-level leagues, but that would require them to recognize such enterprises as the culturally important entities they are, and as they’re already largely spent to the hilt it’s unlikely they’ll even want to entertain the idea of funding clubs and athletes that are often seen as spoiled or fortunate, even if they’re struggling to make ends meet like everyone else.

The game-day experience of finishing work (what’s an “office”?), grabbing a pint or a bite to eat with friends, heading to the stadium and cheering on the home team — a routine as important to many clubs as it is enjoyable for many people — just isn’t foreseeable at present.

There’s not much, in fact, that is foreseeable. That future sporting landscape, like most things imagined post-coronavirus, doesn’t look like anything. It’s a fog. And with football as with everything else, it’s now a matter of finding our way through. We’ll figure the rest out when we get to the other side.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter @JerradPeters