The entire industry of sports has taken a major set back amidst the Covid-19 crisis emerging since March 2020 resulting in the worldwide shutting down of sports, gym, and fitness activities . To look at the detrimental economical effect this has brought, one can only contemplate the amount of loss to be incurred by the sporting industry in terms of revenue of ticket sales and viewership and also taking into account the huge amount of wages that the big star players are on.
 
          To exemplify my point, let me state the situation in the football industry in Europe. All of us know the critically acclaimed and extravagant nature of European football and especially in England’s Premier League which is known to have the highest annual viewership worldwide than any other league or sport. The elite clubs of these leagues rightfully own gigantic stadiums with a 40,000-60,000 seating capacity and also have the onus to maintain such assets by employing over 200 staff. To bear such cost of salary to the staff and players(who are on extravagant wages) is too much to bear for any club who’s ticket sale and viewership income have plummeted down to the surface. 
          
          To come up with a possible solution the management of these clubs has sat down to negotiate with the players to take 20-50% wage cuts during this pandemic to ensure full payment to their non-playing staff. Considering that on an average these players earn about £50000-£100000/week; taking a pay cut does generate a good sum of money, but still isn’t enough to ensure complete liquidity.
          
            Now with most European countries which have flattened the Covid-19 curve have decided to resume sporting leagues under restricted conditions,e.g. Having to play in empty stadiums (or ‘closed doors’ as the sports fanatics call it) and having all the players tested before the games. This does ensure the competition side of the game to have a conclusion instead of canceling leagues which causes a great deal of contempt and disdain among the fans who long to see their teams win silverware.
             This does look good on the viewership side of the game which again resumes to generate revenue and helps the clubs financially. However looking from the sportsmen’s perspective, they are not very elated with the decision. In most team sports, the crowd support behind the team plays a massive psychological effect on the players. It has been statistically observed that teams who play in their home ground with the majority of spectators supporting them( called the ‘home crowd’) perform better and win more matches than playing in an away from home in a different ground the support of the crowd against them.

            However, all is not lost. After all, whichever stadium a team plays in will be a neutral ground that is not causing any positive or negative psychological impact on either team/ players.  The psychological factor becoming nullified in the game does remove an important motivation for the players to perform but there are still trophies to be won, glory to go after, bragging rights to fight for, positions/rankings to secure. So it is still the great game we love to watch, one field, 2 teams, and may the best team win!