01 Apr 2020 11:55:46
A general question about Covid 19 affect on sport.
Ed do you think with the continuing lockdown, that we will lose a few of the smaller teams in the football pyramid, and could this lead to the restructure of the leagues as was discussed on the forum awhile ago?
Do you also think that this will happen in other sports like rugby?
{Ed002's Note - Firstly other sports, certainly in Europe, don't have the money that is involved in football so the impact on the likes of cricket and rugby will be less, particularly as there are few pro sides. Cricket does have variants and they may not survive so well - but the county game in England is poorly attended already - so a season off would not be show stopping. If you look American Football (where ironically they don't use their feet) there are few pro sides. Hockey is big world wide (except te EU) and has a lot of money - but they should be able to ride it out. Baseball has three major hubs, Cuba, US and Japan. They will need to cut right back on wages which are very significant.
As for losing clubs, I have explained before that I do not see that so many pro sides can be sustained from a financial perspective within the sport which, like it or not, will see more and more money going in to the highest levels of the game. Governments will ensure that grassroots sport get funding but everything in the middle (Southern, Northern, Conference, Division 2, Scottish Divisions 1-3, League of Wales may not get the funding needed to continue on any sort of professional basis. For me, clubs should already recognise this and put their efforts in to getting there finances in order to see if they can make it to a British professional league that will need to flourish without perhaps six sides that have eventually gone down the pan-European route - and have gone for good (it would be two or perhaps three initially) - and those who are simply not financially available and either slip away completely or have to press resetand start again way down the pyramid of leagues. This situtaion we have right now will likely topple a few over the edge.}
01 Apr 2020 14:02:50
I agree that we will see some going over the edge. Thanks for the reply.