The impact of COVID-19 on the sports industry

Leonardo Colares Castro
Unisinos Business School, Unisinos University, Porto Alegre, Brazil

With COVID-19 came a lot of study handbooks in sports contexts, trying to comprehend this new phenomenon as a form of analytical science. Professor Paul M. Pedersen did an astonishing work in providing a collection of essays that ensure a broad conceptual and empirical view of the impact and reflexes of COVID-19 on different actors and levels of the sports industry. Indeed, as a Sports Management Professor and an editor of the International Journal of Sport Communication, Pedersen’s collection of essays and research evaluated are corporately oriented in line with his academic background. What makes the unicity of this handbook, in other words, is the diversity of contexts in which it is applied, and the areas that compound a systematic approach in comprehending the dynamics of sports and social relations through business; but not limited to that, it also  includes economics, management, sociology, communication, marketing, and other specific areas.

Pedersen says that the handbook seeks to ‘elucidate what the sports industry has encountered because of the Coronavirus’ (p. 2). Adding to that statement, to systemize COVID-19’s impact on the sports industry, the book is organized into six parts, having between five and six chapters in each part. The headings of the following parts are Sports Management, Sport Communication, Sports Marketing, Sports Events, Sports Stakeholders, and Sports and Society.

The editor details that ‘the chapters provide a timely account of the state of the sports industry after facing – and in many ways still encountering – the upheavals caused by this worldwide pandemic’ (p. 2). The statement is explained in the book in a variety of management scenarios. Regarding a broad economic impact, particularly in relation to sports stadiums, with a significantly higher impact on smaller league clubs due to their structure and low television broadcast rights. Also, the impact on institutional levels, considering media coverage, league practices, and club tensions. Sports media coverage contemplates the consumption of sports products and social media actions, considering players with celebrity status, media impact on sports communication, and fan behaviour. From league practices and club tensions, this provides a vision based on the characteristics of the public sector, sports federations, voluntarism, and on the economic impact of Coronavirus on these institutions.

Considering the analysis of the ongoing process and return to sports after COVID-19, as well as the management strategies of sports stakeholders such as clubs, leagues, countries, players, and fans, this handbook provides an accurate view of the impact of the coronavirus on sports industries.

For example, studies such as the ones from Luca Bifulco, Elsa Kristiansen, and Norbert Shütte indicate a structure based on the reflexes on sports at the national levels. In particular, the study from Bifulco detailed that ‘everything was somehow now, unexplored, and people were very much improvising in orienting their choices and opinions’ (p. 359). He explains that this was applied in almost every situation, and I couldn’t agree more. The fact that we saw, from a Brazilian perspective, several health consequences due to the Bolsonaro government, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), and the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) agreement in the 2021 Copa América poor health protocols (Castro, 2021), only increases our view on how sports generate political opportunities. As Bifulco detailed in his chapter, as in Italy, football works as a pivotal part also of Brazilian society. In line with this, he contends that societal tensions become more complex as contexts like the pandemic emerge. Without a proper general intervention, considering the sports stakeholders, they all lose. Thus, money and power issues in sports structures should not take precedence over athletes’ specific interests such as health, athleticism, and financial security.

The first chapter provides an overview of books that were written about COVID-19 in sports contexts and how the book is distinguishable as it aligns human costs to the ‘upheavals related to the sport calendar’ (p. 5). Considering that the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a re-evaluation of sports institutional safety measures and protocols, I was particularly captivated by the diversity of themes presented in this book. The authors considered specific theories and concepts applied to sports, such as an economic perspective on sports mass events impact (Chapter 2), public relations perspective (Chapter 12), consumption capital theory (Chapter 14), branding of sports athletes (Chapter 16), risk management in sports events (Chapter 20), and Crisis Resilience Thesis (Chapter 27). Sensitive topics on COVID-19 were analysed, such as the impact on amateur sports as they lack investment (Chapter 3), the context of de-globalization, de-commercialization, and semi-mediatization of sports (Chapter 8), mood and anxiety of university athletes and non-athletes (Chapter 26), sports betting (Chapter 32), and sports activism (Chapter 33). Furthermore, studies explored digital and media usage in context of COVID-19, with chapters that detailed a perspective on sports media roles (Chapter 5), semantic and syntactic programming of sports channels (Chapter 10), relationship marketing of sports clubs (Chapter 13), self-narrative of sports celebrities (Chapter 18), innovation of sports events through digitalization (Chapter 21), athletes’ news conference and social media usage in quarantine (Chapter 22), and fan engagement strategies (Chapter 24).

One of the most captivating things in the book was to comprehend the specific sports views on particularities of countries and regions during the pandemic, such as the impact on French sports federations and government (Chapter 4), European sport perspective on structural change (Chapter 11), the soccer consumer behaviour on Brazil (Chapter 15), rugby, soccer, and tennis sports events in South Africa (Chapter 19), the Norwegian context (Chapter 23), and the structure of Korean soccer (Chapter 34). Also, the book detailed how behaviour and structures were affected during COVID-19, in themes such as fitness industries perspectives (Chapter 6), high school athletics events (Chapter 7), young audiences consumption behaviour (Chapter 9), motivations for baseball consumption and spectatorship (Chapter 17), sports culture on shutdown contexts (Chapter 28), eventual political sports issues and tensions (Chapter 29) and sports computer games consumption (Chapter 30). Also, studies provided a view on specific social and demographic data during COVID-19, such as the decline of sports volunteers (Chapter 25) and the social stratification in physical activity and sports (Chapter 31).

The book emphasizes many aspects of esports management in the COVID-19 context, and the themes relate to each other on different levels, but I felt like something was missing. Even though sports finance was mentioned in some chapters of the book in an economic impact analysis context, sports funding, and revenue (such as Chapter 2, Chapter 4, Chapter 14, and Chapter 20), I believe it would be relevant to assign a dedicated part to explore in greater depth aspects of sports financial aspects such as team and event planning, international and national media, revenue sharing among leagues, ownership investments, crisis management in context of insurance and contingency, and more. In line with that, some cases would be interesting to analyse such as club financial losses due to health protocols (Easton & Hellier, 2021) and the quantity of League Games affected by COVID-19 (Mendola, 2021) and its impact on media rights. The paper of Alam & Abdurraheem (2021), published on Sport in Society in an “article commentary” format, provides an interesting view on this topic. Their results indicate that COVID-19 leads to ‘shortfalls in revenue, loss of jobs, and subsequently high unemployment levels, the downturn in standards of living, people’s fitness and general wellbeing, and rises in the cost of living’ (p. 154).

Furthermore, it would be interesting to have a deeper view of cross-cultural particularities, international sports organizations, and how COVID-19 shaped global sports marketing. If we think about it at a national level, we can imagine how difficult it would be to manage sports through international institutions during the pandemic. Chapter 11 indeed considered that, but the book had the potential to relate this context in other articles, such as the 15 and 21. I need to mention that, some authors, such as Wei Wei and Li Siying in Chapter 8, tried to address the particularities of globalization in this context, but more things could be explored, providing a deeper view of this topic.

Considering the analysis of the ongoing process and return to sports after COVID-19, as well as the management strategies of sports stakeholders such as clubs, leagues, countries, players, and fans, this handbook provides an accurate view of the impact of the coronavirus on sports industries. Some topics, such as international business and finance contexts, could be explored further, but the chapters do contain some information related to these fields, which provides the reader with a true conceptualization. Full credits go to Pedersen for putting together a collection that serves as an important resource for describing how the pandemic has influenced the broader sports industry, including the transformation of professional and social attitudes toward sports.

Copyright © Leonardo Colares Castro 2024

References

Alam, M. M., & Abdurraheem, I. I. (2023). COVID-19 and the financial crisis in the sports sector around the world. Sport in Society, 26(1), 154-167.

Castro, L. F. 2021. “Conmebol, CBF e governo Bolsonaro: um triângulo na pandemia.” Placar, May 31. Accessed 5 March 2024. https://placar.com.br/placar/conmebol-cbf-e-governo-bolsonaro-um-triangulo-na-pandemia/

Easton, J., Hellier, D. 2021. “Man Utd and Juventus Lose Over $370 Million Due to Covid.” Bloomberg, September 17. Accessed 9 March 2024. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-17/man-utd-and-juventus-lose-over-370-million-due-to-covid-hit

Mendola, N. 2021. “Full list of Premier League games affected by COVID-19 outbreaks.” NBC Sports, December 24. Accessed 9 March 2024. https://www.nbcsports.com/soccer/news/premier-league-full-list-of-premier-league-games-affected-by-covid-19-outbreaks-updated