The 2020 MLB regular season, and the vast majority of the postseason, proceeded without fans in attendance. You can’t have massive groups of people congregating for hours during a pandemic, so that was that.
As teams look ahead to 2021, with even more time to prepare and consider the revenue impact of fan attendance, you better believe every avenue will be explored to have some capacity of fan attendance at most (if not all) ballparks for most (if not all) of the season. That conversation, indeed, will tie directly into the owner-player negotiations on whether adjustments to the schedule and pay will be made. So even if you, yourself, don’t much care about going to a ballpark next year, this all still matters a great deal to the entire sport.
No surprise: Commissioner Rob Manfred wants fans back next year.
“As we look forward, we will be more aggressive about having fans in ballparks,” Manfred said during a panel discussion held by The Paley Center for Media as part of its 25th annual International Council Summit, as transcribed by The Athletc. “There were places where we could have had fans this year, and in fact we did have fans for the LCS and the World Series in Texas. Even though local jurisdictions had started to open up, we decided for this year that we would stay empty during the regular season.
“I don’t think that’s a tenable position for us going forward. We’re going to have to allow the clubs to operate safely. We’re obviously going to have league-wide protocols. If local public health authorities allow for fans, I think you’re going to see fans in the ballpark next year. Now, will it be full stadiums? I kind of doubt that. But we do think it’s important, and it’s why we did it in the World Series and the LCS: to get people accustomed to the idea that you can go to these live events with appropriate protocols, pods of people, social distancing, masks, and do it safely.”
All fair points if we’re keeping things general and non-specific. If fans can be safely permitted by local authorities, then, sure, MLB can and will come up with its own protocols to be in compliance.
Manfred’s points dovetail with the discussion we had this week about the vaccine status, and Dr. Fauci’s estimation that we could see wide distribution to even low-risk individuals by April. No, the wide availability of a vaccine does not immediately end the pandemic, but (1) it could, if enough people actually got the vaccine; and (2) it makes attendance at large gatherings more palatable if those who want a vaccine could have received one before attending.
Realistically? Even if the timeline holds and the vaccine is (or multiple vaccines are) highly safe and effective, the virus will still be circulating all next year. That will mean teams will have to convince local authorities AND fans that it is safe to attend games. That, in turn, will mean certain affirmative steps that are consistent with the best medical science then available (masking and social distance being the big two), so I try to avoid getting too into the weeds on “judging” plans right now. Manfred and teams want more attendance next year? Well, sure they do. Let’s see where things stand when we are a little closer than five months out, and let’s see what those plans look like.
Of course, I have to acknowledge what the team response would be there: they need to have a higher level of certainty than “we’ll see,” because they want to make out their budgets right now. That does have real world impacts, too, not just for player movement, but for regular staffing decisions. There are hundreds and hundreds of workers whose future employment is going to be almost entirely dictated by what the plan is for fans at games next year. Knowing what that plan can – and cannot – be is critically important, and the sooner the better.
I know that doesn’t lead us to any conclusions, but this stuff is complicated for a reason. It’s easy enough to say “we want and need more fans at games next year,” but it’s quite another thing to know how and when to pull certain triggers.
I guess I feel like we just have to take these things week by week, and while the vaccine news this week has been good, the explosion of cases, hospitalizations, and mortality certainly has not been. That makes it a very difficult time to feel especially confident about fan attendance as soon as March or April.