When Rod Wood and his wife Susan recently went out to dinner at the Renaissance Center, the president of the Detroit Lions was given an idea of what a not-too-distant long-term look at attending NFL games is like.
Anyone entering the 73-story construction overlooking the Detroit River will have to answer 3 questions about their fitness and recent trips, and then go down a hallway for a thermal frame temperature analysis.
If a visitor’s temperature is below that day’s threshold, they receive a yellow “scanned” label and are allowed to enter the building.
[The Free Press has introduced a virtual subscription model. Here’s how our ultimate exclusive sports content. ]
Masks are mandatory and social distance is at all times.
For Wood, going to dinner was like, “I was going to the hospital or something. “But given how the coronavirus pandemic has changed the lives of major American sports, it’s imaginable that fun will become the norm in stadiums, arenas, and other places built to accommodate tens of thousands of fans.
In the years after September 11, the NFL and other professional sports leagues put into practice security measures that, in the first place, seemed harsh but are now standard: buffer zones around baseball fields, 24-hour live security stream, non-appointment visits. detectors, chopsticks and clear bags are among the existing protocols that did not exist in the maximum sports facilities a generation ago.
“I think there will possibly be some facets of that, which will become permanent like the 9/11 security measures he talked about,” Wood said. “I’d say you’ll have several things. First, what does it mean to have the virus under control?Does that mean he’s here, but other people aren’t afraid to die because of him, but you still don’t need to get him?Therefore, some of those things can persist forever, or for a long time.
And then I think the other thing that will count on is that what other people feel makes them feel safer, and ‘I’m not going to move on to this position because they don’t have that kind of measures, this position. ‘”And I think the client will probably dictate a lot of those things. The 9/11 measures were more dictated through the government passing through the country and others. I think in this case, it can be so much customer-driven. “, which I will not move on to a position that does not keep its installation blank and not me and its employees, and is suitable for wearing mask and gloves. and all those things that aren’t unusual now.
The NFL is expected to begin its 101st season Thursday night when Super Bowl protection champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Houston Texans at Arrowhead Stadium in front of some 17,000 fans, or 22% of the stadium’s capacity. .
The Lions open the regular season sunday in front of the Chicago Bears in what will be an empty stadium differently. Restrictions in the state of Michigan lately restrict sports facilities to 25% of their capacity or 250 people, depending on the lesser of the two: Ford Field typically has 65,000 fans.
[Lions expect to have enthusiasts at Ford Field on November 1 opposed to the Colts]
Football in Michigan, Michigan and Big Ten remains suspended, despite protests from players, while other schools across the country seek to navigate the slippery slope of the game a pandemic.
COVID-19 has forced the NBA and NHL to finish their previously interrupted seasons in bubble environments. And the Detroit Tigers compete for their first place in the playoffs since 2014 while playing in empty stadiums in the Midwest.
The sport has not replaced much between the lines due to the pandemic, and probably would not have evolved, but everything else, from the gaming economy to the viewer’s experience, is heading towards a dubious future.
“Our sports unscreo together,” said Johnny Smith, professor of sports history at Georgia Tech. “These are networking sites and also provide a sense of distraction from the outside world in many ways. Of course, today seeing that this is not the case. Sport can’t provide a distraction because it’s to escape the virus. The virus is shaping global sport. “
[Want more Lions news?Download our free app on iPhone and Android!]
The last time a virus of the magnitude of COVID-19 hit the United States more than a hundred years ago: the 1918 influenza pandemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this pandemic has inflamed approximately 500 million people, or a third of the world’s population, and killed 675,000 in the United States alone.
COVID-19 affected about 27. 6 million people internationally and killed 190,763 nationally, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“If you read the 1918 newspaper articles, you swear you read the New York Times today,” professional football historian Joe Horrigan said. “It’s amazing. They communicate about the final schools and dress in masks and funeral homes loaded with corpses that they can only handle. It’s very, very similar. “
This year’s 1918 influenza pandemic, like this year’s COVID-19 epidemic, coincided with an era of social unrest; misinformation of the government, as well as the return of infantry soldiers to their homes after World War I and abroad, contributed to their spread. , the plague of 1918 great disruption in world sport.
The 1918 World Series moved from October to September, Smith said it was largely due to the war, but when the deadliest wave of the pandemic struck, from September to December 1918, he shortened the school football season: Michigan claimed a national championship with a 5-0 record that year, and completely canceled the most prominent professional football league , the Ohio League.
Horrigan said professional football had largely returned to its pre-pandemic behavior in 1919, after the government lifted bans on giant gatherings. People stopped dressing in masks on sports occasions and football was so popular that in 1920 they created the NFL.
“The 1920s is this era of stadium boom for school football,” Smith said. “Many stadiums are now War Memorial Stadium or Veterans Memorial Stadium, they are all over the country. And those were huge concrete stadiums that still exist today. “, and I think the fact is, in the words of President (Warren) Harding at the time, Americans were looking to return to a sense of normalcy. He wanted to say the word normality, but the same is true today that Our sports are created as a component to bring other people together, so I think at the end of the day, other people need to have that interaction again.
Sport, of course, is a much bigger business today than it was a hundred years ago, and the monetary incentives for it to continue to thrive are immense.
So, as everyone aspires to get back to normal, from the youth football leagues to the best football players in school, school and professional groups whose seasons are at stake lately, Smith, Horrigan and others say it’s best to see how the game has later replaced more modern occasions to find a plan for the way forward.
“The NFL has been wonderful in its reaction to the consequences of things like in New Orleans with (hurricane) Katrina and September 11 and World War II,” Horrigan said. “They’ve been very proactive in keeping the game very, very in difficult times, so I don’t see why it would be any other this time. I think they will be proactive in making sure there is again the most productive style of practice. “
[Lions predictions game by game for 2020: Do they have to expand the playoffs?]
Of all professional sports, the NFL would possibly be perfectly prepared to face the coronavirus pandemic.
The virus first increased nationally in March, the league’s off-season, so when the NBA and NHL were forced to finish their normal seasons and major leagues had to pause spring training, the NFL was able to take a wait-and-see approach. with their games.
According to CBS, groups that don’t welcome enthusiasts this year are expected to lose $70 million in admission earnings, but the NFL is expected to make the vast majority of its profits from big media rights agreements: each team earned $296 million in national profits this year. and local earnings percentage groups, the adjusted salary cap based on unit figures.
Add new game earnings resources and the fact that the league covers back-to-school grocery shopping seasons and holidays that are so for advertisers, and Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a leading sports business consulting firm, said he had no doubts. that the NFL will continue to thrive after the pandemic.
“The pandemic has shown that the NFL is one of the best capitalized, well-off and must-have facility corporations like Amazon and Apple,” Ganis said. Amazon’s market capitalization has grown by more than 75% this year and Apple’s by more than 50%, despite the pandemic. “It’s on that level. There are many other people and companies eagerly awaiting the return of the NFL. . . As a result, the NFL will become stronger, just as Amazon and Apple have reinforced the pandemic.
Despite the NFL’s financial strength, there are significant adjustments and potential dangers that await her and other leagues.
Collegiately, the pandemic also exposed a business style built on the backs of unpaid workers, and with interrupted earnings streams in NCAA football and basketball money-generating sports, universities have been forced to cut budgets and, in many cases, not-for-profit. Equipment.
Subscribers: Michigan football systems prepare for ‘big impact’ of new NCAA rule
Smith said he feared for the long run of the Olympic Games after the postponement of this summer’s Tokyo Games until 2021. Japan’s Olympic minister recently said the games would be held next year “at all costs,” though Smith said the pandemic might be of interest. countries to tender. More prudent long-term games to invest in the infrastructure they need.
NBA and NHL stadiums might want to be permanently reconfigured to keep enthusiasts away from players and playing surfaces and, depending on the duration of fears about the virus (or long-term pandemics), NFL stadiums would likely look at others in their next iteration. , with a more open area and less seating capacity.
“If you think about it, in the 1970s and 1980s, cities and communities were asked to build stadiums with 80,000 seats,” Horrigan said. “Now he’s not even on board. First, the league no longer asks communities to pay, however, they build 60,000-seat stadiums that can be expanded for a Super Bowl if they are interested. Seat yetts aren’t as vital as television and fantasy football, and now, unfortunately, they’re probably playing for income. it just changes. “
Live arena scenarios can also be replaced for other reasons.
Ganis, who has consulted with NFL groups on the structure of the stadium in the past, said he plans more outdoor stadiums or places with a retractable roof in the future, where contactless appliances in spaces are not unusual spaces and spaces between bridges abound. The entry and exit procedures will be different, and it is imaginable that the behavior that has been formed during the pandemic, when families invest in summer spaces, swimming pools and space restructuring projects, absolutely saves others access to stadiums.
“I don’t see the virus reducing interest in sport,” he said. “There are other social points where I’m a little more involved. And some are remnants of COVID. People have found out they can do it. “things, spending more time with their families, more time in the house and the importance of having a moment in the house if they live in the city, so that we can see some of the things that other people thought to do when we didn’t have a sport, and a sure percentage of the population will prioritize the things that are for at least one component of their time and sporting pleasure.
Wood, who has talked about improving the stadium’s fun during his five years as President of Lions, said he had also thought about those possibilities and cited a recent review by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to explain the uncertainty, go ahead.
The study warned that the effects of the pandemic can persist in the economy for up to 70 years.
“They compare that . . . with the Depression and you communicate with anyone who went through the Depression, it’s still in their minds today,” Wood said. “They’re still thinking about too many debts, I could lose my house. And I don’t need to have too much cash in the bank because the banks go bankrupt. You hear that if you know someone who experienced the Depression or was a child during the Depression, remember that their father lost his homework and was in the soup line.
“Once you’ve experienced this, you think it can happen again. So I think other people who have been through this right now, and maybe for 70 years, will think it can happen again. that lasted so long was the concept of putting someone in my place or someone running some other business, when you’re making plans for your business, you’ll probably keep in mind, “Well, what are we going to do if we have other pandemics?”
Lions and maximum groups go through extensive crisis recovery plans to prepare for unlikely scenarios that leave their buildings unavailability or have an effect on operations.
Wood said top executives did this “because you feel compelled to do it, but you never think you’ll have to. “
And now?
“Now other people say, ‘It’s real. Ed. And it may happen again,” he said.
As ordinary as the last six months have been, the NFL predicts a general season of 16 games. Contingencies are in position in the event of an outbreak, but on Wednesday, only 3 players were on the league’s reserve/COVID-19 list. .
Five NFL groups will have stadium enthusiasts at their homes to open the year, and although the Lions are one of them, Wood expects to be replaced on November 1.
If enthusiasts can do so, they will still be greeted through thermal frame scanners, however, they will see a number of other settings in the game day experience.
“We’re probably running at a maximum capacity of 20,25 percent, because no matter what states allow, the league’s mandate is that you’ll have the fewest state or CDC guidelines,” Wood said. a number of other module models, two-family equipment, 4-family equipment, six-family equipment, and then how many seats should be locked between this module and the next module. And then there are the suites, and how many seats you will place in the suites so that there are no other people in one suite sitting next to the user in the next. “
Fans will have to wear masks at every NFL stadium this fall, and Ford Field will likely have admission times and assigned doors. Plexiglass barriers in sales areas.
Unlike previous years, porristas, pets or presentations are not allowed on the field before the game, and entertainment exhibits are prohibited on sponsored occasions and part-time.
Football looks the same as always, but the NFL, like all professional sports as we know it, will be different.
“I’ve made a kind of decision that we’re going to celebrate a first occasion that will never take place every 10 years,” Wood said. “You had the 11 September 2001 monetary crisis, then the 2008-09 monetary crisis and now you got it in 2020, so in the last 20 years have happened 3 exclusive occasions in life . . . So I think if you’ve experienced that enough, you’re going to have some other of those unique occasions, maybe it’s not a pandemic, it can be something absolutely different over the next five to ten years. “
Get in touch with Dave Birkett: dbirkett@freepress. com. Follow him on Twitter . Free Press has introduced a new virtual subscription model. Here’s how you can get our maximum exclusive Lions content.