By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Reporting on live sports in the age of COVID-19 has changed. The manner in which reporters are handled while covering sports during this pandemic crisis will lend insight to how fans will be handled down the road when they are eventually allowed to attend sports events.
Friday morning, I’m here as a credentialed writer at the UFC Apex building, which will host the first sports event in Nevada tomorrow when UFC puts on a fight night event featuring a welterweight bout between Tyron Woodley and Gilbert Burns. It will be the first sports event in Las Vegas in nearly three months. Today is a weigh-in event and most media are not allowed in the Apex building, a rehabbed facility sitting a long walk from UFC’s headquarters campus off the 215 beltway near the Rainbow exit. Instead, a small number of media including myself are in a tent outside the building.
When I enter the Apex parking lot, I check in with a security guard, who directs me to the Apex entrance. I go in the building only for a UFC staffer about 20 feet from the front door to take my temperature with a temp-reading gun aimed at my forehead. Even with an LVSportsBiz.com cap on my head, the reading is 98.5 degrees. Good to go. then it was off to the media tent outside the building today.
Several weeks ago, LVSportsBiz.com interviewed Jason Wilson, a Tampa, Fla.-based doctor at Tampa General Hospital who has tracks COVID-19 cases. Indeed, Wilson said temperature testing of fans upon entering a sports venue will likely become common place. You can read that Wilson interview here.
White also told LVSportsBiz.com about two weeks ago that the technology to test fans before they are allowed in sports venues must improve.
“Until testing technology gets much better than it is now . . . the president was telling me there’s something coming where you can lick a tab and it will tell you if you have it or not,” UFC President Dana White told LVSportsBiz.com in a live streaming interview from Jacksonville, Florida May 12. “When we get to that level of testing, then you can start thinking of having fans again.”
UFC weigh-ins are typically raucous events held before hundreds of screaming fans at venues on the Strip.
But as White ushers in live sports events in the U.S. through sheer will power, passion and his unbridled love for staging fights, the first fight show in Las Vegas features fighters walking up to a scale in front of no fans and hardly any UFC officials Friday. Only three media members including MMAJunkie’s John Morgan are witnessing the weigh-ins in person inside the Apex facility.
A staffer barks out the fighter’s name and they strip off tights to their underwear and step on the scales wearing a mask. Another staffer yells out the weight. For the record, lightweight fighter Brok Weaver missed weight and loses 20 percent of his purse. Eleven fights are set for Saturday to be covered by ESPN and ESPN+.
I’m sitting at my own table in a media tent outside the Apex building. In this scaled-back live sport operation, only about five other sports reporters including Channel 3 broadcaster Amber Dixon, MMA reporter Helen Yee and “The Schmo” are here with me. Typically, several dozen media members pack seats shoulder-to-shoulder at weigh-in ceremonies. But no more. We each have our own five-foot-long table for social distance requirements.
When fans return to stadiums and arenas, they may also be separated by six feet to meet social distancing guidelines.
Tomorrow the media treatment gets ratcheted up. To report on Fight Night 38 live at the event Saturday, I am required to drive to a nearby hotel for UFC to administer a coronavirus test. After I’m tested, I will be sequestered in a hotel room. If I am negative, a UFC shuttle will transport me to the fight event at the Apex facility. If I’m positive, a UFC medical personnel member will talk with me.
On Saturday, I am credentialed to report on this live sports event inside the Apex to bear witness to UFC’s staging of this live sports event. The first of the 11 fights starts 3 p.m. Las Vegas time.
In many ways, the steps the media will follow will likely be a blueprint for life as a fans at live sports events.
And next week, UFC repeats this entire logistical operation when it stages UFC 250 at the Apex June 6 when UFC star Amanda Nunes takes on Felicia Spencer. LVSportsBiz.com MMA writer Cassandra Cousineau will be reporting from UFC 250 for our coverage.
Follow LVSportsBiz.com on Twitter and Instagram. Like LVSportsBiz.com on Facebook.