Hoops

NH: effect of coronavirus on sports leagues

Covid-19? Yeah it's really serious ay. So we're gonna make each quarter a bit shorter.

- The AFL

Liberals won’t let Foxtel go down, been giving them millions for years. It’s there PR machine.

NRL already asking for millions, royal Easter show cancelled for only the third time in 200 hundred years.

Sports will suffer big time. Lucky for the NBL their season is at it's end. Power and Crows need around 30,000 spectators to a game to break even. Sponsors will drop off, merchandise sales will drop off. Catering deals and business rely on the matches for customers. A lot of AFL clubs have massive debts already. The AFL is lucky it has massive TV rights deal and a future fund, but this is going to hurt financially as all the clubs will be putting their hands out.

Australia was never going to be told by government to close sports before this weekend, Hillsong got massive meeting at their headquarters this weekend. Been wandering around Sydney from OS. Morrison was never going to let that happen.
It was left to individual sports bodies to make correct decisions. Well run organisations like the nba, premier league get on the front foot and make decisions despite of governments. The nbl got this right. It’s a pain for everyone and who ever loses could complain about loss of crowd support but still better than the alternative which could lead to the virus going wild.

NZ always ahead of us, following all medical health authorities advice. It’s a total pain in the arse but it should keep it under control.

Good move by New Zealand. Meanwhile in Australia...

The recent announcement from the NZ government is going to force the hands of the NRL, Super Rugby and whatever game or league involves NZ (Cricket has been cancelled).

Teams basically can’t go to NZ to play their games because they’ll have to be quarantined for 14 days - and that’s obviously not possible.

And NZ teams can’t go to Australia because then on their return to NZ each time they will be required to be in quarantine for 14 days.

There’s currently NZ teams overseas that won’t make it back before the midnight deadline tomorrow and therefore don’t really know what to do and are in limbo (e.g Super Rugby) - Highlanders may just stay in Argentina or go to Australia and chill there.

Crazy stuff!!

Have sex can do that at home

Ban any city or town greater than 500 people

Perth has 2 million people so they should ban Perth starting from Monday

The more people there are the higher the chances at least one is infected and the harder it is to trace everyone should someone test positive.

LOL.

Seriously though, surely it should be based on the density of distribution of people rather than the total number. I'd feel a lot safer as one of 2,000 people scattered around Optus Stadium than I would as one of 100 in a small bar.

Why are they canceling sports leagues altogether?

Are they worried about players infecting each other and passing it on?

I understand playing behind closed doors. But canceling altogether seems draconion- at least in Australia.

They have played soccer to empty stadiums before (due to fan violence) and so it is not new. For such an outdoor sport like AFL and NRL, I think the players rely on the noise and the buzz to get motivated.

In a game of AFL a total of around 180 points per game are scored. It will be particularly interesting to see if the the scores go down as a result of playing in front of an empty stadium, or if the tempo of the game is affected.

The stadiums will obviously be massively affected through loss of food and drink sales and of course ticket sales account for revenue for clubs so without fans there will be a massive hit to the hip pocket.

The only glimmer of light would be whether the limit of 500 fans per match could be used to rotate fans through the match. ie have a roster/lottery where a fan gets to see one game per season so at least they keep interested. The clubs would probably want to bias those attending to the high end sponsors and the like, but the players probably want the grass roots fans on the boundary.

I guess, a fan ban will give those Collingwood fans plenty of time to get some dental work.

Lithuanian league suspended for 2019/2020 . VTB league as well, most other leagues on hold till end of March and decision to made then. Landale Lithuanian team declared winners.

Everyone will still watch the AFL on TV so they should be ok on that front. In fact ratings might be up if people are staying inside more over the next month or so

No thread on this game yet?

Also on Ten (albeit with some less than friendly viewer audio in the first quarter - and that was before the technical problems).

Best defender (ever??) in the NBL, Damian Martin has gone down with a suspected ruptured achilles. Bad luck for Martin but for once it wasn't a Hawks player going down with a serious injury.

Could this be a series changer. Scores tied at the beginning of the third.