News: MLS Suspends season due to Coronavirus

https://www.latimes.com/sports/stor...-like-sports-could-be-in-a-timeout-until-2021

 

He makes a lot of good points. I'm not yet sure the NFL/CFB season is a total loss, but anything else likely is. We need to start considering there will be no further 2020 MLS season, or if there is, it might be something that looks more like the Desert Diamond Cup than the 2019 season.

 

I could foresee an August - early December MLS season, maybe with the first few games behind closed doors, each team playing every other team in their Conference once plus a few extra rivalry matches.

That's if Fauci is right and things start to normalize in some states by mid-June.

We know from history that sport can be a great morale booster.

 

I agree that we'll likely see sports sooner than the LA Times article predicts. There is a segment of the population that has a Coronavirus-induced civilization-crushing long-term shutdown of everything as sacred writ and is only thinking about how to shape the new world. This article seems in that vein.

My concern is that California government seems to be thinking this way and could scuttle sports singlehandedly by not allowing games until 2021 no matter the facts on the ground.

 

I still think we see leagues that are near the end of their seasons try to find some way to finish up without fans (NBA, NHL, and looks like Bundesliga at least as far as soccer goes). It's starting or continuing brand new seasons in the case of MLB and MLS that feels kind of pointless if there's not going to be any spectators for most if not all of the schedule.

 

Realistically though, by the time those leagues can start playing, you're looking at impacting the planned start of next season if you're going to play every remaining game and all playoffs as planned from this season.

 

Leagues can be underway by June with empty venues, in my opinion.

 

Yea at this point I expect NBA/NHL to just go straight to some form of playoffs instead of launching the entire league.

 

NRL wants to resume on May 29.

 

It's starting in the same way MLS stadiums are started. I see a bunch of lovely renderings, and the odd bulldozer clearing some land.

But it's all meaningless until they start actually playing games. And I haven't seen anything remotely close to that happening.

A few weeks ago there was all the talk about the Chinese basketball league starting back up. Well, it turned out just to be talk:

https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/nba/miami-heat/article241605591.html
"The CBA season was set to resume in the first week of April, then it was moved to April 15. Now, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, the restart has been delayed again to late April or early May, which extends the stoppage to more than three months."

We're going to see tons and tons of "renderings" about how these leagues will operate, but I'll believe it when they actually start playing. It's great to draw up a bunch of plans, but then running it past the lawyers and the risk analysis of someone involved actually ending up on a respirator - regardless of cause - and the risk of the blowback gets pretty sobering.

I do, however, think we'll see professional team sports before we see college sports. I think some local high schools are stupid enough to start their seasons, but I don't think College Football will start as scheduled.

I could see some individual sports like golf or tennis start back in some limited form, but the big major team sports are going to be dark for a while in my opinion.

 

The incentive for MLB and MLS is sponsorship and broadcast contracts. There's a lot of income that probably isn't coming in, and the lack of games this year will likely push ripple effects into the following years as the leagues probably have to offer some "make good" opportunities. I don't know if MLS's dollars are high enough, but certainly MLB has huge financial incentives to play games even without fans in order to satisfy some of the sponsorship and broadcast deals.

 

The current MLS domestic TV contract is expiring soon too, so they have added incentive to play games in order to have as strong a negotiating position as possible.

Not to mention that SUM will need to bring some money in to cover the $30M it pays annually to the USSF.

 

Given the semi-independent nature of FBS football from the NCAA, I'm wondering if we might get to a situation where certain conferences where college football is king (SEC, I'm looking at you) decide full speed ahead while others where its not as big a priority (Pac-12, this is you) decide to hold off.

 

I just think the adults in the room (liability lawyers) will step in and shut that shit down. You find 100 people in the ICU a couple of weeks after the first Alabama or Florida or LSU or Missouri home game and the lawsuits will be crushing. And that's assuming they get to the first game. Gathering a 120-150 kids plus all the coaches, trainers, managers, and support staff for July/August practice, all that would be needed would be the virus to move through one team.

 

How can immunocompromised athletes participate? Even if they don’t know they are at this point in their lives. Cancer-survivors, asthmatics, etc. The first one to get seriously sick and/or worse would bankrupt a university.

Thx,

Jay!

 

I would imagine they don't play without some sort of green light from public health agencies. Couple that with language added to or existing in liability waivers athletes already sign, school's will be covered so long as they are following whatever recommendations put out by CDC/State public health agencies.

If these agencies issue advisories against playing team sports, I'd expect everything remains shut down until those are gone, even if they are simply advisories and not outright bans.

 

And the USWNTPA has signed a bunch of Collective Bargaining Agreements that they negotiated with USSF, which as far as I can tell USSF has abided by.

That hasn't stopped the USWNTPA from vilifying USSF in social media #EqualPay.

Being legally protected doesn't mean not suffering huge negative impacts from ones actions if public opinion turns against you.

 

Isn't SUM worth something like $2 billion?

 

On advantage of High School sports is they are local. So if one state is clean, they can have sports. Also crowds much less.

 

Outside of Texas

 

Depends on the state and the size of the state. In larger states with a lot of rural areas, HS sports can cover a rather large geographical area and this can result in spreading the virus where it usually wouldn't have spread.

 

Airlines were also worth billions. Suddenly losing most/all revenue changes valuations real quick.

 

The XFL just declared bankruptcy.

— Eriq Gardner ✍️ (@eriqgardner) April 13, 2020

Thx,

Jay!

 

Deaths in Italy and Spain far outpacing "worst case" projections by the University of Washington. They expected Spain to be a worst case of 402 today, 517 instead. Italy is even worse with "worst case" 326 while reality at 566... That means we probably shouldn't expect their prediction of US deaths to trend toward 0 in early June.

 

The real problem with sports - as opposed to movies or theater or museums - is the travel involved. The mixing of populations, in the game, and for traveling fans. The statistical chance of exposure goes up astonishingly fast.