Like most industries, the world of sport plunged to the depths of uncertainty at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. By the end of March this year, nearly all sporting competitions had ground to a halt. One by one, major events were postponed. Grand slams, world cups and grands prix, once the first things noted in the calendar at the start of the year, were no more. The biggest casualty of them all was the Olympic Games in Tokyo; its postponement at the time feeling like the final nail in the coffin, the death of sport in 2020.
Perhaps that sounds melodramatic. After all, no matter how much we love sport, it could obviously never equate to life and death. The figurative death of sport this spring was no where near as important as the very real number of deaths reported to us every day during the same period. In retrospect, sport never actually died. Just six months on and a lot of postponed competitions have returned and are either completed or underway. We already have league and cup winners in football, and major champions in golf. In the coming weeks we’ll know grand slam winners in tennis, and the owner of the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. 2020 wasn’t the ghost year that many anticipated.
Yet it’s important to remember the significance of sport’s brief but palpable absence. For many, sport is a livelihood, be it as an athlete, an organiser or an employee at a club. In this instance, lockdown had very real implications. Take the example of an athlete’s career, which is notoriously short even before factoring in one’s physical prime. A gold medal winner in 2020 could – for a whole number of reasons including injury, plateau or the rise of another star – be knocked off the podium in 2021. As such, athletes had to cope with tremendous difficulties – not only of maintaining their fitness at home but also of not knowing how they would perform when they did return.
For others, namely the avid follower, sport takes on a meaning that a job could never provide. Whether it’s a social life, a means of escape, or simply a reason to get up on weekends, the hole that was left when sport was taken away was a huge one. Even if it wasn’t a necessity, it sure felt like a craving that had become agonisingly unavailable.
And it is for this reason that the dawn of a new sporting season this autumn holds a very new and unique feeling. It’s an uncertainty that is usually associated with what will happen on the field. But now, perhaps for the first time ever, most of the uncertainty lies with what will happen off it.
Unfortunately, the wider context of Covid-19 is completely out of the hands of sport organisers. In recent weeks the daily confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK and a lot of Europe has crept back into the thousands. Crucially, the numbers now are higher than they were when sporting events resumed. The trend is clear, hence the government’s recent decision to limit social gatherings in England to six people.
As the numbers become more ominous, so do the prospects for sport to continue in full for the rest of the year. What perhaps aided the return of sport this year was the clarity of plan across the board. We knew in football that there was a set number of games to complete, all behind closed doors. Cricket has pioneered the ‘bio-secure’ bubble. Other sports like athletics, golf and snooker have also enforced strict regulations and social distancing. It may not have been a golden summer of sport, but there were clear rules which were followed well enough to ensure sports fans were more than satisfied.
Looking forward however, we now need to plan ahead for whole seasons of sport – not just a couple of months. Having facilitated sport in a rather clinical fashion over these past few months, we may now witness widely-held expectation of a close return to normality by next summer. From a purist standpoint, the welcomed return of sport has perhaps been blunted by its alien appearance. Whether it’s a Champions League final winning goal, a new 100m world record or a match-winning boundary, it seems wrong for these things to occur without a crowd of thousands to celebrate it. And so the objective of getting fans back into stadia is extremely pertinent, as well as the return of other norms: relaxed distancing, the pre-match handshake, or simply not having to endure artificial crowd noises on TV. But how can sport achieve this while adapting to ever-changing circumstances? Is it plausible to have the same COVID rules in September 2020 as in May 2021?
There are numerous questions like these for which answers seem impossible to give. Would matches be postponed if multiple members of a team caught the virus? Will fans be allowed back into stadia as planned if the trend of rising cases continues? Could localised lockdowns mean some games are played behind closed doors but others are not? In the worst case scenario, could a second national lockdown put an end to sport again?
A problem reflected in both sport and the rest of society is the conflict between biological safety and economic security. It’s a conflict that has meant we have had to send children back to school and encourage dining out, despite knowing that it may nudge the R rate up. Naturally, no one in sport wants to put people’s lives at risk. But the longer games are played in empty stadia, the more clubs suffer from a lack of matchday revenue – an issue which disproportionately affects smaller clubs and organisations who don’t have the luxury of large sponsorship opportunities and commercial deals. We’ve already seen multi-million pound clubs lay off staff and players to balance the books. Any further disruption could spell financial disaster.
All things considered, post-lockdown sport has until now been a tremendous success in very challenging circumstances. The precedent that has been set for safeguarding bodes well for what will undoubtedly be a worrying few months. But all sports need fans to be present. Not just for financial prosperity, but also to enrich the magic it so often serves up. What is absolutely clear is that the last thing sport needs at the moment, just as it starts to thrive again, is a second wave of coronavirus. If this wave does come – and signs show it will – it will take a monumental effort to ride it.
Chris Perrin 