The news that because of the effects of Covid-19 ‘elite’ professional sports are facing a financial shortfall running into billions leaves me feeling a bit ‘meh’. That the Premier League alone is set for a financial shortfall of £750 million of TV money if football doesn’t resume is of little to no interest to me. Yes, I would prefer it if the season would be properly completed, solely in order to ensure Liverpool win the league, but it is so far down my list of priorities it barely registers.
The Premier League exists for one thing and one thing only and that’s to make money. This explains why the money men will move heaven and earth to finish it. And with the backing of the government, who will have noted the imminent return to action of La Liga and the Bundesliga, you know it will happen.
I feel the same apathy towards cricket, rugby union and just about every other sport. Yes, I am concerned about the future of individual clubs and perhaps entire competitions but they won’t cause me to lose sleep. If clubs go bust – and sadly it appears that many of them are going to – then I am sure replacement clubs will rise from the ashes to replace them.
It’s tough for those far lower down the pyramid, whose lives don’t revolve around how much money they can screw from the punter. I’m far more keen that sport in the community gets through this disastrous crisis. The millionaires and misfits who own so many ‘elite’ and indeed some not at all elite clubs can make their own arrangements.
Spectator sport as we know it will not exist at least until a successful vaccine has been rolled out across the country and the reality is that won’t be happening until some time next year and conceivably the year after. Imagine our lives as they are now during the coming autumn and winter. They will be much the same, except that we will all be much poorer and colder.
In any event, I am far more concerned about my friends and neighbours whose jobs will be at risk in the coming months than I am with footballers who still trouser eye-watering sums every week that many of us would not earn over many decades and longer.
Hopefully, ‘when this is all over’™ sport can take a long hard look at itself and come back to the real world where the rest of us live. We know who the real heroes are now and they aren’t superstar footballers.
