As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, things changed a lot in the world of sports.
It’s not just leagues who have had to think about how they’ll play out their current and upcoming seasons. The whole industry has had to make big changes that will change how sports are played for years to come, not just on the professional level, but also in communities.
This is why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation recently held an event called “Fast Forward” to learn more about and understand these changes. People who know a lot about sports came together to talk about how the coronavirus has affected them in the short and long term.
Professional athletes are supposed to use their fame and power for the good of the people around them
A lot of people have been angry about social issues in the last year.
Professional athletes can no longer stay on the sidelines and not talk about themselves. More than ever, sports stars will be expected to use their fame for social good and talk about issues that are important to them and their fans, too.
The basic operating model of sports leagues should stay the same in the long run.
The leagues will still be organized in the same way. Each team will play each other in a competitive season of a certain length. However, the coronavirus pandemic shows how important TV and live audiences are to this model.
Here are three changes we should expect to see in the world of sports:
Because of the coronavirus, people are watching more media. This doesn’t work with traditional broadcast TV, which focuses its main programming on a certain time of day in the evening. This is likely to speed up the use of D2C services to distribute sports content.
These services such as Sports blog are more appealing now because they don’t have a set schedule and have a lot of different things to keep people busy. Consumers will try more of these services, and many will stay with them when the pandemic is over.
This will speed up the decline in cable TV. When this happens, the broadcasters’ advertising income will go down, and they will not be able to buy sports rights.
It’s likely that more and more sports leagues will use their own in-house services to sell content, and they may also make more small deals with other digital players.
Customers in the UK signed up for Amazon’s Prime Video service in the fourth quarter of 2019. This coincided with the company’s first live stream of a Premier League game, which it did for the first time.
Sports and Coronavirus: Fans Now Have a More Interactive Experience Than Ever Before
Some sports fans now have an experience that is very different from how they used to be able to watch games. Companies have made virtual worlds where fans can watch and interact with their favorite sports leagues and athletes.
During virtual watch parties, fans can show their support and interact with other fans and even the athletes.
Product Director, Justin Hoyman says that FloSports has been focusing on ways to help fans stay in touch with their teams and each other, both through the service and through apps.
As Hoyman said, “We want our fans to be there, and this kind of connects them to the event, even if it’s not COVID.” Imagine that these events can happen anywhere in the world, and we want to help make them happen in a way that’s never been done before.