As professional sports around the world have moved towards restarting in the past couple of months, it posed the question of how one of the biggest leagues in America, the National Football League (NFL), would return during the coronavirus pandemic.
The NFL is one of the most viewed sports in America and brings in some of the highest revenue in the sporting world.
According to Sports Business Daily, at this time last year, the league averaged 16.3 million viewers per game. That was only for the regular-season games. Also, the NFL’s 32 teams split a record $9.2 billion in national revenue last season, just on the league’s TV deals, according to Sportico. These are just two snapshots of how there is so much money riding on the NFL having a season.
But how could the NFL ensure safety among 32 teams while providing the season that millions of Americans come to look forward to every year? The league has taken measures to stop the spread of COVID such as testing every single day and banning full capacity crowds at stadiums.
Every day, players, coaches, and staff walk into trailers in the parking lot of team facilities. There, they all get COVID testing before entering the building. The tests are then put on a plane and taken to one of two BIOREFERENCE national laboratories contracted by the NFL; one in New Jersey and one in California. Teams typically receive testing results within 12-18 hours. This is coming at a cost reported by multiple sources of $40 million by each team.
Chris Egan, a nine-time Emmy award-winning sports anchor for KING-5 television in Seattle, shared a personal story about his experience about how the NFL is working to keep everyone associated with the league safe. “I was up watching Seahawks training camp and I was probably too close to a guy from the Seattle Times. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, and my phone’s buzzing, and it says, ‘Chris, you need to get farther away.’ I told everyone that this is going to work.”
Maintaining social distance, for everyone, no matter who you are or what you are doing, is what’s most important right now.
When asked about the possibility of creating a true NFL bubble and whether it would be realistic or not, Egan said, “I think it would be tough for the NFL. It worked for the NHL [National Hockey League], it worked for the WNBA [Women’s National Basketball Association], and it worked for the NBA [National Basketball Association]. It worked great. When you’re talking about NBA and NHL you have fewer people [on a team]. If we see more teams, with the Patriots [earlier this month] having a couple of players test positive, if it gets out of control, it wouldn’t surprise me if the NFL went that route because there’s so much money invested in this with the teams, with fantasy, with betting, so they need to keep playing.”
He hits the nail on the head. The NFL is about money, and for that reason alone, it will do everything it can to move forward and finish the season.
