Sports Industry Facing Strange New World To Navigate During COVID-19 Era; Sports Options Down To UFC White’s Plan For UFC 249 On Mystery Island
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
It’s the morning after what was supposed to be college basketball’s national championship game. For the sports gambling types, some would be celebrating bets, while others are cursing or mopey.
The NHL season was supposed to have ended over the past weekend and chances are the Vegas Golden Knights would be hosting two first round playoff games at T-Mobile Arena on the Strip this week.
NBA teams were supposed to be jockeying for playoff position this week as the association would have been preparing for an intriguing postseason with star players finishing their first seasons with new teams like Kawhi Leonard with the Los Angeles Clippers, Russell Westbrook with the Houston Rockets and Anthony Davis with the Los Angeles. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said there won’t be news in April about re-starting the season.
The Major League Baseball season would have been a week old and we would have seen how the Houston Astros were being received after their sign-stealing mess dominated spring training news. Now there’s talk of MLB launching its season in the metro Phoenix area, which has spring training ballparks scattered in the region.
But the hard reality is this: Professional sports leagues have been shuttered for more than three weeks, sports bettors have had hardly anything to wager on except ping-pong matches and what’s left is Las Vegas-based UFC ringmaster/president Dana White staging UFC 249 at a reported private mystery island for the April 18 event minus the MMA promoter’s star attraction, undefeated lightweight Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Even the local basketball playgrounds are taped off to ensure social distancing as governments from local communities to the state level crack down on people who want to gather.
These are strange new times the sports industry is navigating these days. LVSportsBiz.com has published stories on on how teams can respond to COVID-19 and how the leagues can set up shop in Las Vegas during an interim period of playing games with no live fans at the venues as the sports industry is integrated back into American society.
Sports have played the roles of community healer and community galvanizer during previous stressful times like in New Orleans where the Saints won the Super Bowl after Hurricane Katrina in 2006 and in Houston where the Astros won the World Series in 2017 after the floods devastated Houston and in Las Vegas where the Golden Knights made a miracle run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2018 after a shooter killed 58 and injured more than 500 along the Strip on Oct. 1, 2017.
But now sports are sidelined during the COVID-19 pandemic, which features counts of death tolls and confirmed cases instead of scores and standings that fans feed on and debate.
The Raiders stadium construction work continues. More than 1,000 construction workers a day are on the job. Here’s a look at the stadium from the 215 western beltway trail some 12 miles to the west and two close up views.
LVSportsBiz.com will continue our coverage of the business of sports and stadiums in Las Vegas as this pandemic continues. We will support each other.
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