It’s a little incredible how much less online I am in the wake of working from home due to COVID-19. I watch a lot less TV. I’m almost never on Twitter or Reddit. I’m not getting enough work done, either, but being at home with all of my family has definitely been interesting.
There’s gonna be a lot of fallout when all of this is over. Nothing’s really going to be the same. Companies that have had to transition to virtual offices overnight will assess productivity and weigh whether they really need physical offices as much as they previously thought. Governments will be inundated with lawsuits questioning whether business and other shutdowns overstepped constitutional authority. And sports leagues will be a mess.
Since this is a soccer website, let’s ask some soccer questions. How will the season be affected if the season suspension stretches into the summer? Will the season be shortened? By how much? What’s gonna happen to the US Open Cup? Is the inaugural USL Cup simply off the calendar now? What are clubs going to do if a big chunk of their expected revenues disappears? Will they even survive? I fear that some won’t, and maybe more than anyone expects.
Soccer clubs all over the world live on thinner margins than anyone thinks even in “normal” times. Sports, in general, aren’t generally a very profitable business except for the very few top clubs. Clubs like Southampton in England, Paderborn in Germany, or Eibar in Spain, all currently in the top divisions, are probably going to be hit really, really hard by their season suspensions (or even premature endings). Some won’t make it; they can’t.
As you can imagine, it’s even more precarious in places where the game isn’t yet ingrained into the national fabric, e.g. the United States. However, I do believe that professional soccer has come so far so fast in this country that it’ll come out of the other side of this pandemic catastrophe. The game might even be stronger for it. However, the financial side of it may be different. Uli Hoeness, former player for and president of Bayern Munich, said recently that the days of the 100 million euro transfers is probably over. The money and appetite for spending on sports is going to be less for a while, probably, while the global economy tries to recover from COVID-19. It’s gonna take a while.
The clubs that manage this crisis well will be leaner and perhaps even stronger than before. I think Louisville City might be one of those clubs. The building of Lynn Family Stadium could not have been more fortuitous. That’s the thing that’s going to keep Soccer Holdings afloat for a while, most likely. Without it, that becomes a much more open question. But crises tend to force organizations to find and eliminate inefficiencies in their business and maximize efficiencies that they do have. Yes, there are going to be revenue setbacks, as games and events get postponed or cancelled in the near term.
Looking longer forward, though, whenever this is over, people are going to be dying to get back outside and socialize. Just two or so weeks of social distancing has made me realize how much I need interaction with other people, and that doing it over the internet isn’t close to enough. I know many in our Purple Family feel the same.
And it’ll be great when it happens. That first match at LFS, once this COVID-19 cloud is lifted, is going to be even more electric. I don’t even care what the play on the field looks like as long as there are goals. We need to stay apart now, but when we can get back together, we’ll take every opportunity we can to celebrate. Celebrate our health, celebrate our community, and celebrate our club. What a great day that’ll be.
VAMOS MORADOS.
