NEWSLETTER
May has arrived. This is the month, as current national plans exist on paper, when distancing guidelines are supposed to soften in meaningful ways.
… but is that really going to happen? Is it going to be justified if it does? What will the impact be of states behaving so differently in their approaches?
I don’t think we’re even remotely as close to these answers as I hoped we’d be on May 1, and we certainly aren’t where we need to be on testing (still). The novel coronavirus first arrived in this country in January, but testing was still in the four figures daily on March 15. Thus, more than three full months into this thing, we still aren’t testing enough people to generate a 10% positive rate (which is apparently where you need to be to feel comfortable that you’re actually testing enough people to know how widespread the disease actually is).
I hope that testing explodes in May. For so many reasons, we need it to. But as I sit here today, the points I make about it being crazy that people try to say they know for sure that sports cannot happen in two, three, four months from now? I still believe that. But the other side is also true: it’s crazy that people try to say they know for sure that sports can happen in two, three, four months from now. I see Texas A&M announce that they will have football in the fall, and I just shake my head. Hope for it? Sure. Make contingency plans to help it happen if possible? Absolutely. Announce with confidence that it’s definitely going to happen?
How?
NBA Intends to Find a Way to Resume, Will Feel Pressure
A report from CNBC came out yesterday that had an eye-opening headline – “NBA team execs, agents are calling on the league to cancel the rest of the season” – but it’s based on an unspecified volume of anonymous execs and agents, not all of which appear to actually be saying precisely what the headline describes. Mostly, it reads like there are concerns about resuming (noted), and concerns about having a proper opportunity to get ready for next season (noted, though pushing back the start of next season to December kind of ameliorates those concerns).
There is an open question, though, about how much upside there is for the NBA to resume, relative to a sport like MLB, which hasn’t even started its season. For the NBA, much of the national TV dollars are already accounted for. Player salaries, the greatest league expense, are already taken off the table as an additional expense if the season doesn’t resume. And if you’re a team out of the playoff picture? All the less reason to want to resume.
That said, it doesn’t necessarily seem like league as a whole agrees with the CNBC sentiment. With May 1, today, having been set as a cutoff by Commissioner Adam Silver for any conversations about what might happen this season, Adrian Wojnarowski reports, “Across the league, an overwhelming majority of high-level officials remain encouraged and optimistic that basketball will return this season.” Testing still needs to ramp way up nationally so that the league doesn’t appear to be taking away tests from those who need them, and the financial particulars still have to be sorted out, but the league is clearly aiming to finish its season – regular and post – and most are on board with that attempt.
Including LeBron:
Saw some reports about execs and agents wanting to cancel season??? That’s absolutely not true. Nobody I know saying anything like that. As soon as it’s safe we would like to finish our season. I’m ready and our team is ready. Nobody should be canceling anything. 👑— LeBron James (@KingJames) April 30, 2020
Team presidents also participated in a call yesterday, leaving with a sense that there are ways to finish the season, and having an intention to do so, per ESPN.
Unfortunately for the NBA, they are likely to receive a lot of pressure from the other major sports to resume their season. “How can we start if [the NBA] didn’t get to finish their sport?” an NFL league insider told CNBC. “The NBA finishing their season would be a positive for all sports getting back to work.”
And since all leagues are getting pressure from the federal government to find a way to resume, there is a whole lot of weight being placed on the NBA’s process here: return when you can, return safely, make it a very enjoyable product, and don’t look like a-holes in the process.
MLB and the Umpires to Fight About Compensation?
I’ll be honest, it’s not a dispute that was even remotely on my radar with respect to the baseball shutdown: what about paying the umpires? The umps do have a union, after all, and their relationship with MLB requires negotiations about compensation. They’re losing their pay right now, too.
Ken Rosenthal writes about the topic, and about the fight that’s brewing.
[MLB’s] proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The Athletic, includes reductions in umpires’ regular-season and postseason pay as well as their per diem. The umps are split on whether to accept the offer, sources say. Some view the cuts as excessive. Others fear if they reject the offer the league will strike back punitively, and that public opinion will turn even more negative against a group that already is largely unpopular with fans.
Many umpires recall how their mass resignation backfired in 1999, with baseball accepting 22 of the resignations and hiring new umpires. Now, as the league operates in a national emergency, it could invoke force majeure to suspend its contractual obligations to umpires.
MLB umpires, when considering total compensation, benefits, and per diem, appear to be quite well-compensated, according to Rosenthal’s numbers ($37.6 million owed this year to 76 umpires – you do the math). I am not saying they are not worth their compensation, but I do think it’s important to note that this is not likely to be a public relations battle where the umpires will do all that well. You could call that unfair given baseball’s $10+ billion in revenues, but it’s simply the reality that fans have relationships with players, not with umpires.
Also, read Rosenthal’s piece for the proposed reductions … they seem pretty reasonable to me. This is not a fight that should pick up steam.
German Football Delayed, Testing Begins
As an example on how sports leagues’ best-laid plans can be scuttled by forces outside their control, the German government halted the Bundesliga’s plans to return on May 9 – not because a May return is off the table, but instead because the government determined it would not be in a position to make a decision on a variety of matters next week (ESPN). That means the Bundesliga has to wait, even as it believes it is ready to play.
In the United States, although it seems pretty clear that the federal government is going to strongly endorse any and all sports plans to return, each of the states will have their say on when sports can be played within their borders. It’s not hard to imagine a league formulating a plan, getting the OK at the federal level, and then finding that an impacted state or two will not permit games on that same timeline.
That said, if the Bundesliga does get back underway in May as it intends, it will offer an example – good or bad, successes or mistakes – on how to do it. The league has already started testing its players, and will do so up to twice per week per player through June 30, when it hopes to end its regular season. How will it handle the PR attached to testing? How will it handle an inevitable positive test?
Related: we know a bit about the human cost and risk of reopening things, but the ESPN article notes something more. The league – one sport in one country – indicates that there are upwards of 56,000 jobs that are directly reliant on the league. Once again, sports are not merely a whimsical distraction for fans (though they are, and that’s not nothing) – they are a huge business enterprise on which enormous industries full of regular employees are reliant.
Balancing the economic impact of the shutdown against the risks of opening back up too soon, of course, is an extraordinarily difficult issue that extends far beyond sports.
Baseball in Asia
The KBO is concluding its preseason slate, and remains on track to open its regular season in four days:
Took more baseball photos today. It was our last preseason game before the #KBO opening day. Let's go! pic.twitter.com/A0q0HdHfrC— Sung Min Kim (@sung_minkim) May 1, 2020
Doing Good
👏🏼👏🏼 #ProjectFRONTLINE 👏🏼👏🏼
Today, they'll deliver lunch to frontline healthcare workers. They've done this almost every day for a month — 8,000 meals so far.
Meet Joe Smith, Allie LaForce and the people behind the project. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/JPZhMKeXV7— MLB Players Media (@MLBPlayersMedia) April 29, 2020
