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rb

By rb
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rb Newbie

rb

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Does any one have any idea how sports come out of this? Even if the worst goes away in 3 months, that brings us to the end of June. Are people gonna be ok to cram themselves into stadiums come the fall? Are they just gonna cancel the seasons?

 

To my fellow Canadians, what about hockey? The 2004 lockout was brutal. These guys already wear a ton of PPE. Maybe just issue a rule that gloves must stay on at all times?

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Spekulatius Grand Master

Spekulatius

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A lot of things will not go back to normal until we have a a vaccine. Sport, air travel, Cruise lines, concerts are examples. These sectors  are looking at a long winter.

 

Some sports are probably going to be plaid in empty stadiums for TV only. Takes away some fun and atmosphere but its better than nothing.

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rb Newbie

rb

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A lot of things will not go back to normal until we have a a vaccine. Sport, air travel, Cruise lines, concerts are examples. These sectors  are looking at a long winter.

 

Some sports are probably going to be plaid in empty stadiums for TV only. Takes away some fun and atmosphere but its better than nothing.

The problem with empty stadiums is loss of ticket revenues. This is particularly acute for Hockey which doesn't get much TV money. Ticket sales are around 70% of NHL revenue. At that level they probably can't cover expenses with empty stadiums. But even for the mighty NFL ticket sales are still around 40% of revenue.

 

Can you actually operate at these level? As far as I know a lot of these teams don't actually make a lot of money.

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Spekulatius Grand Master

Spekulatius

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Posted

A lot of things will not go back to normal until we have a a vaccine. Sport, air travel, Cruise lines, concerts are examples. These sectors  are looking at a long winter.

 

Some sports are probably going to be plaid in empty stadiums for TV only. Takes away some fun and atmosphere but its better than nothing.

The problem with empty stadiums is loss of ticket revenues. This is particularly acute for Hockey which doesn't get much TV money. Ticket sales are around 70% of NHL revenue. At that level they probably can't cover expenses with empty stadiums. But even for the mighty NFL ticket sales are still around 40% of revenue.

 

Can you actually operate at these level? As far as I know a lot of these teams don't actually make a lot of money.

 

Some revenue is better than no revenues. Players will need to take pay cuts.

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Gamecock-YT Proficient

Gamecock-YT

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Other issue with potentially pushing the season back is what to do about contracts that may end before the season is over. It's going to be a mess. Then you are also potentially running a situation where you end up cramming too much into the second half of the year. I think the French Open is currently scheduled to be played on the same weekend as the Laver Cup going to be played.

 

I've watched a good bit of eSports since the end of live sports. The racing actually translates well, skill wise but seems to be a lot more accidents taking place. But not sure it's going to keep my attention in another month.

 

But agree with the thoughts above that until there's a vaccine it's going to be a slow return of fans whether it's imposed by governments not to allow maximum capacity or the fear people will potentially have of being around large groups. 

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Xaston Newbie

Xaston

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I think it's really easy to underestimate the esports thing. 

 

I love regular sports and have watched a ton of all the major American ones my whole life.  But at this point only 1 of my three favorite sports to watch is a still a "real" one (NFL). 

 

There's a certain age of the population that considers esports as legitimate as regular sports, and the amount of the population that was born in a year late enough for them to considers esports as legitimate is the ultimate tailwind.  That number is only going up from now till the end of time.

 

And there's so many "mechanics" to the games that are not realistic or possible in regular sports (shoot giant energy balls out of your hands, be an alien, be a robot, be Mario, control multiple entities at once instead of just yourself, have a jet-pack and rocket launcher and exist in the year 2160), that if people who think they are as valid as regular sports, looks around the world of esports enough, they'll find something that connects with them. 

 

And because of the nature of it, it will be live on twitch at that very moment at some pretty high level of play.  And that sport will be able to have large updates to the game that are as significant (or a LOT more) to what perfect strategy is as pushing the extra point kick back 15 yards would be in NFL or adding the 3 point line in the NBA with regularity if need be to keep the "league" to be as fun as possible to watch and/or play. 

 

And in any given geography for regular sports you realistically only have like 5 options (or 0 now but I mean regularly) to watch without adding a lot of friction, you can only watch it live and played at an elite level a small portion of the week (for only whatever season length during the year it's on for, with none outside the season), and those 5 options are still all constrained by the laws of physics and the physical limitations of a human being in ways that esports just are not. 

 

If you just like to watch the very best (e.g. pro leagues), you can have all the fun little rituals too for watching them that you do for regular sports and just watch them like that too and not worry about making it not special by oversaturation.  But also if you want to be oversatuated you can because in addition to the major leagues with esports you can also easily consume tons of the minor but still pretty expoert play, and practice play between elite players or teams.

 

Just to further illustrate what they can be that you can't really get in a regular game, my favorite esport is kind of like if chess had 3 different sets of unique pieces you could choose from at the beginning of the game (creating 6 different types of unique matchups for the spectator before you even add in the question of who is even playing), and it was both players turn at all times.  If you're into the strategy of games something like that is inherently compelling.  My second favorite one has ~100 different characters to choose from (where the biggest differences between many of them is MUCH larger than the difference between Shaq and Steph Curry), and is a 5v5 game unlike the 1v1 game that I described at the beginning of the paragraph.  This means every game you ever watch of that has an added layer of uniqueness that is literally impossible to recreate in regular sports. 

 

And what is going on in the world now just set the timeline on them forward some large amount (how much is tbd), on their battle to draw eyes and openminded brains away from regular sports to them. 

 

 

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