Sports, also a victim of COVID-19

The coronavirus that is officially called COVID-19 is winning its battle against the world with no vaccine to curb the contagion. And even the sports world has been greatly affected by the global pandemic as most sports competitions here and abroad have been suspended, if not cancelled.

Locally, the Philippine Basketball Association opened its 46th season before a huge crowd at the Araneta Coliseum on March 8 then suspended play two days later.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association cancelled the remaining sports competitions in its 2019-20 calendar in the first week of February. Shortly thereafter, its chief rival in the Metro Manila collegiate league, the University Athletic Association of the Philippines, followed suit. It first completed its Juniors basketball tournament (won by National University for a second consecutive year) without any fans in attendance before halting the popular women’s volleyball games following several playdates.

In Europe, the pro leagues in Italy and Spain, which have been hit hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, were cancelled. So were those in Germany, France and Belgium

In the Asian scene, China, South Korea and Japan suspended play in their respective basketball leagues as early as late January in the case of the Chinese Basketball Association. The Korean and Japanese leagues eventually wiped out whatever was left in their season schedules but the CBA, plans to resume play in May after a couple of false restarts, including one that would have re-opened in mid-April after seeking the recall of foreign-born players, including more than 20 Americans that includes Taiwanese-American Jeremy Lin, a reserve with the 2019 NBA titlist Toronto Raptors, who flew all the way from California to the Mainland in mid-March, only to be told by the national government to reset it again.

Then came the belated decision of the International Olympic Committee last March 24 to postpone by a year the crown jewel of international sports, the Summer Olympics, which had been slated to be held in Tokyo, Japan from July 24-August 29.

Already $12.6 billion had been spent for the Games before its postponement and more than $6 billion were also lost in sponsorships and television contracts.

The Tokyo Olympics will now take place in 2021 from July 23-August 8. Even the Paralympics were moved back to August 24-September 5 next year.

While all the 11,000 athletes that were expected to show up in the Games this year would have become a year older in 2021, the IOC decreed that all athletes that already qualified for the 2020 Games will retain their qualification next year. It was a great relief for most of the athletes from 206 countries.

In the United States, which now has most number of people infected by the coronavirus with more than 220,000 with 5,000-plus fatalities, the National Athletic Association (NCAA) also cancelled its Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments that is famously labelled as March Madness/

The damage will run to nearly a billion dollars in revenues, including about $800 million in television deals. The NCAA has already announced that will distribute only S225 million to its Division I members in June, down from the nearly $600 million it initially projected before its cancellation of the tournaments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A year ago, the NCAA estimated it would receive $827 million from broadcast and licensing rights from the national men’s basketball tournament in 2020 (The NCAA owns an $8.8-billion deal with CBS and Turner television.)

In the professional National Basketball Association, league play has remained suspended since March 12 following the initial COVID-19 positive cases involving Patient Zero Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz.

Since then, there have been a number of COVID-19 infections involving NBA personages. These are Christian Wood of the Detroit Pistons, injured Kevin Durant and three other Brooklyn Nets, Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics, two unnamed players from the Los Angeles Lakers, three members of the Philadelphia 76ers organizations, and another from the Denver Nuggets organization.

Even the owner of the New York Knicks team since 1999, 64-year-old James Dolan, tested positive for the disease last March 28. The Detroit Pistons’62-year-old scout Maury Hanks is battling for his dear life after contracting the coronavirus.

Then there’s also Doris Burke, a full-time NBA game analyst since the 2017-18 campaign (the first woman to hold that role) who tested positive for COVID-19 last March 17 but only found out about it eight days later. Burke, who has covered basketball for ESPN since 1991, has since recovered.

More than 100 games of the 259 games remaining in the NBA regular sked have already been scrapped. The league suspended play for at least 30 days although it looks like the hiatus will stretch into the mid-to-late June because the COVID-19 infections in the States have not peaked and the expected flattening curve is still probably a couple of months away.

Games are not likely to resume before the trajectory of the curve has come down. The NBA stands to lose around $500 million if the remaining regular games are not held (without fans) and as much as $1.2 billion if the league also decides to cancel the playoffs.

A majority of the players want the league to resume play even if the regular games are reduced to just five or seven games to prepare themselves for the playoffs, even with a shortened postseason that will call for a best-of-five series instead of a best-of-seven.

There was a proposal to televise and hold the games (without fans) in one site to conclude the season. Under consideration are Las Vegas, Orlando, Hawaii, Atlantic City, Louisville and the Bahamas.

Meanwhile, the players have received their April 1 paychecks but the next scheduled payment, April 15, may include some cuts in their salaries, depending on the agreement between the NBA and its players union.

Earlier, on its own initiative, the NBA reduced the base salaries of nearly 100 of the league office’s top-earning executives around the world by 20 percent. That includes NBA commissioner Adam Silver and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum.