What If They Resume Sports Events And No One Comes Back?

“@NateSilver538

 · 11h Y'all can do whatever you want but I'm going to a fuckload of concerts, baseball games, restaurants, etc. as soon as this is over. “

There are, no doubt, many people who would agree with the 538.com pollster that they will sow some oats when the powers that be come to their senses and let the healthy people out of their unhealthy homes. Silver, who, among other things, cut his teeth as a sports analytic geek, has captured their zeitgeist. “Let my sports people go!”

They want to return to the old days, filling the stands and pouring billions into the dream factory of sports. But it remains a case of “Not so fast!”

In IDLM’s previous column we talked about the importance of gate receipts, beer sales, parking rights, suite sales and merchandise income they’d generate to the health of modern sports— in particular the health of $30-million-a-year contracts. If those seats don’t fill up or if corporations decide luxury suites are a bad look then a whole lot of people are in line for a big financial haircut.

But knowing what we know now following our graduate course in second-hand epidemiology is it also likely that people are going to flock back to the public arenas and stages? That they will transition from scared shitless to devil-may-care in a week? With people from the U.S. president through to the heavy hitters in public health saying that the hand shake is done after five millenia of use, how interested are people going to be in sitting six inches, not six feet, from some over-refreshed football fan or a Grateful Dead aficionado whose shower hasn’t been working?

The notion that the public— particularly the fussy Canadian public— is going to forgive and forget the virus scare is a huge assumption at this point. For instance, having seen the success iff the NFL’s virtual draft this past weekend, what are the odds that corporations and sports organizations opt for safer, tech-based gatherings with no chance of being sneezed upon? 

Or that fans might not just choose to put their feet up at home with friends and a 100-inch TV screen to catch their sporting heroes at play? They now know another pandemic is inevitably coming when Covid has gone— it’s just a question of when. So why hasten that day?

Let’s examine a few more post-Covid assumptions that are likely to affect whether fans heard out to the ballpark or concert hall. Public transit. We’ve been lectured for decades by woke urban types that sprawling suburbs and cars with single drivers are the road to climate hell. They’ve promoted public transit and stacked living in their lectures in the SJW media. It was considered bad form and bad climate conservation to use the fossil-fuel formula. 

But after seeing the New York subway or other famed mass-transit system become a trampoline for spreading the virus, how many fans are going to hop aboard the GO train or the SkyTrain with thousands of others to attend an event? It says here that for the foreseeable future fans will opt to drive places or else work from home. 

The only people cramming themselves onto public transit will be the ones with no options. But they don’t generate enough income to support the massive networks of trains, buses and subways in the modern metropolis.

Further, in the wake of Covid’s killer embrace and the hysteria it produced will fans be inclined to travel to out-of-town games or championship contests if it requires air travel and staying in hotels/ motels? The masked reality of air travel in the future is sure to discourage a segment of the fan base. And how much will fans want to risk that the room they’re staying in is properly cleaned or the person changing the pillow cases hasn’t just arrived from Wuhan or Ebola?

The production and safety of the food chain has been another issue of concern during Covid. Who will be lined up at the food concessions in the stadiums or theatres unless they can be assured the food and, even more, the servers aren’t hosting a buffet of germs and virus?

And while many fans will ignore all this to attend their heroes’ games, what happens if the performers themselves decide that it’s not safe to go up-close-and-personal with a rival in the football, hockey or basketball game? Or if the officials and referees don’t want an earful of abuse and a nostril full of a killer virus? 

Is the future all the performers wearing masks? Or having their temperatures taken between shifts or possessions? 

We are about to discover that resuming life as it was is something trickier than first thought. With the toothpaste out of the tube can we be assured that a population petrified of someone getting within six feet will suddenly do a Bobby Ewing and pretend it was all a bad dream?

Nate Silver might then find himself like the Maytag repair man— the loneliest man in town.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of Cap In Hand which is available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca