by Hans Izaak Kriek*
The corona pandemic strikes humanity right in the heart of life, has major consequences for the economy as well as for sport in all its professional and amateur competitions.
The Olympics is the biggest event yet to be affected by the growing global pandemic. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games that were postponed due to concerns around the coronavirus pandemic have been rescheduled for next summer.
The games will open July 23, 2021, and close Aug. 8, 2021. The Paralympics will be held Aug. 24 through Sept. 5, 2021.
The Olympics were originally scheduled to take place between July 24 and Aug. 9 this year, but Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agreed to postpone the games, as countries around the world struggle to contain the pandemic that has claimed more than 34,000 lives and forced millions around the world into lockdowns.
The new schedule was agreed upon in a telephone conference between IOC President Thomas Bach, Tokyo 2020 President Yoshiro Mori and other officials, the IOC said in a statement.
The new dates give health authorities and all involved in the organization of the games the maximum time to deal with the constantly changing landscape and the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the statement added.
"The new dates, exactly one year after those originally planned for 2020 also have the added benefit that any disruption that the postponement will cause to the international sports calendar can be kept to a minimum," the IOC said in its statement. "Additionally, they will provide sufficient time to finish the qualification process. The same heat mitigation measures as planned for 2020 will be implemented.”
After the new dates were announced, World Athletics said its championships that were to be held in Eugene, Oregon, from Aug. 6 to 15, 2021, will be moved to new dates in 2022, so they don’t clash with the new Olympic schedule.
The decision to postpone the games was welcomed by many athletes and national committees after growing calls for the games to be delayed or canceled because of the outbreak.
Global sport are losing billions of dollars Some of the biggest events in the sporting calendar fell victim to the coronavirus this week, with organizers, clubs and broadcasters among those counting the multibillion-dollar cost of disruption after fixtures across the world were cancelled because of the global pandemic.
The English Premier League, France’s Ligue 1 and UEFA, European football’s governing body which organizes the Champions League, became the latest organizations in the sport to postpone matches after players and coaches contracted the virus and forced teammates into self-isolation.
The start of the Formula One motor racing series was delayed, with this week’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix cancelled. Many of North America’s biggest sports leagues, including the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and college tournaments, have also been postponed.
Leading professional tournaments in tennis, rugby, golf and upcoming World Cup football qualifiers in Asia have also either been halted or axed.
The swath of cancellations has left holes in broadcast schedules, while clubs are fearing a cash crunch that will make it harder to pay player salaries and some franchises are preparing for legal battles over the terms of calling off a season.
The impact goes further, with heavy losses expected for many businesses associated with the competitions. “Everyone thinks immediately of lost revenues from matches that are cancelled,” said Fausto Zanetton, chief executive of Tifosy capital and advisory, a sports investment company. “But this is just the start of it clubs have commercial contracts which are contingent on ‘brand exposure’, matches being broadcasted and/or dependent on spectators in the stadium.”
Lost ticket sales will hurt events and clubs, especially smaller ones, but the suspension of games is a big setback for broadcasters, which pay billions of dollars for the right to live sports to fill schedules, attract viewers and sell advertising.
One US broadcasting executive said sports networks could still emerge ‘reasonably well’ as long as games are eventually played, even without spectators. “It’s hard to cope if 100 per cent of your live event channel has been cancelled,” he said. “But the flip side is that you don’t pay costs.”
Thomas Rabe, chief executive of the German media group Bertelsmann, said cancellations would ultimately mean sports rights-owners losing revenue. “If [the games] don’t take place then the payment will not be due, or will be reimbursed,” he told reporters.
The suspension of the NBA and NHL just as they were approaching high-stakes playoff games could mean hundreds of millions of dollars are lost in advertising revenues for the largest media companies: Disney, which owns ESPN, and AT&T’s Warner Media, the owner of Turner.
These groups paid 24 billion dollars for the rights to air the NBA games through the 2024-25 season, and it unclear whether they will have to pay these fees in full of so many cancelled games. The loss of NBA fixtures leaves a big hole in their programming schedules, and if the season remains suspended through the playoffs next month, they would miss out on the bulk of the advertising revenues for this year.
Analysts warned that the loss of live sports could accelerate the death of traditional television, expanding the ramifications of this outage well beyond lost advertising sales this year.
In the UK, the English Premier League, one of the world’s most watched competitions, had formulated a plan focused on completing the season, including playing matches in empty stadiums, in an effort to protect its 9.2 bn of pounds domestic and international broadcasting contracts.
That plan fell apart after Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Chelsea player Callum Hudson Odoi announced they had tested positive for the disease, leading their teammates to self-isolate. In response, the English Premier League held an emergency meeting recently where the 20 member clubs decided to suspend the season until April. It followed similar suspensions in Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s La Liga earlier in the week.
Formula One said with the Australian Grand Prix cancelled, and upcoming races in China, Bahrain and Vietnam postponed, they expected to resume the global racing series at the end of May.
There is pressure to fulfil upcoming races, as a third of F1s overall revenues come from promotion fees worth 30 million – 70 million dollar an event. Race promoters recoup money through ticket sales, but the events are often run at a loss or subsided by governments.
Across Europe, football executives in top leagues have begun considering contingency plans in this unprecedented scenario, as it is unclear which teams would be allocated lucrative European places and face the financial penalty of relegation.
For example, in England, the top four clubs qualify for the next season’s Champions League, Europe’s top club competition where 2 billion dollars is shared between competing clubs. The bottom three teams are relegated, losing tens of millions of pounds. They are replaced by three sides from the Championship the tier below the Premier League, which earn at least 170 million pounds from promotion.
Wimbledon cancelled the tennis championships for this year for the first time since WWII. "It is with great regret that the AELTC has decided that The Championships 2020 will be cancelled due to public health concerns linked to the coronavirus epidemic. The 134th Championships will instead be staged from 28 June to 11 July 2021."
The Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme send a message said: “I wish the Tour continues, but not for the race himself.” According to the race director, there studied whether the Tour possibly can be driven later in the year. Prudhomme said in a reaction “health comes first.”
*International political commentator and editor-in-chief at Kriek Media International
By: N. Peter Kramer
