I wrote about coronavirus and how it was and might affect sports around the world last week. Since then, more cases have been confirmed in more places, and games, festivals, and other events have been postponed or cancelled altogether. Italy has basically shut down the entire country and has postponed all Serie A matches until at least April 3rd. The SXSW festival in the United States has been cancelled and Coachella was postponed. All of the major U.S. sports leagues have taken measures to restrict locker room access for reporters in an effort to minimize the possibility of exposure for players.
Arsenal, the Premier League club about which I manage a website, just postponed it’s match against Manchester City scheduled for Wednesday, March 11th on the advice of the British government. Several of Arsenal’s players and staff had come into contact with Olympiacos and Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis 13 days ago. Those who interacted with Marinakis are self-isolating through Thursday evening, when the 14-day period when they can transmit the virus has ended.
We are still just seeing the beginning of COVID-19’s effects on sports. I think more games will be postponed in the coming days out of an abundance of caution, or at least they should be. As I said last time, I’m not a medical professional, so my opinion doesn’t carry all that much weight. But from a commonsense perspective, it seems like an awfully big risk we are taking for sports, something that at its core isn’t that important to society.
In the United States (and to a lesser extent in Europe), we just don’t know how many people have been exposed and what the penetration of the disease actually is. For example, earlier this week, it was confirmed that a priest who had given communion to hundreds of parishioners in Washington, D.C. tested positive for the virus. We don’t know where it is, we don’t really know who has it, and we don’t know how much we are spreading it by continuing to gather large groups of people together.
I simply cannot see how the college basketball conferences and then the NCAA can play tournaments with spectators in attendance over the coming weeks. I think they will do everything they can to avoid cancelling them altogether, but it seems a foregone conclusion that the arenas will be empty. Thank goodness for TV and streaming — they will come in handy as we sit at home trying to minimize our time spent in public, I suppose.
The Lukewarm Take 