Sporting fans will be all to aware of the huge win that the Lakers had as the first victory in a decade and an emotional send off from the team Kobe Bryant who had unfortunately passed earlier in the year spending his entire career with the team. However, the big success story for the NBA has been within their approach to bringing the game back to the fans, and in a way that no other sporting event has been able to do. (lighthousedispensary.com)
The bubble that was created for the NBA in Florida had initially been criticised by many – both fans and experts alike – with many suggesting that the approach would be doomed from the get go and couldn’t be a permanent fixture, but the results speak for themselves. Throughout the season, not a single positive case of the coronavirus had been reported within the bubble and as such no disruptions were found, other big events such as Major League Baseball’s return and the NFL weren’t so lucky as both found increasing number of cases quite early on that threatened not only postponements to certain games but even spurred talks of a full cancellation once again. With a second wave spreading across Europe and numbers increasing in the US NBA, many event organisers may now turn to the successes’ found here as a blueprint for how things should be. To help, a 100-page document had also been released back in July outlining all of the requirements players and teams alike for the rules that must be followed in order to sustain a healthy and clean bubble environment and may be amended for others too.
The success here has certainly helped other industries that rely on the continuation of sporting events too – many such as the gambling market had certainly struggled toward the start of the year following the initial round of troubles during the pandemic and a healthy return would spur growth, changes to regulation has had an impact on some but you can find a list here of sites not on gamstop that are more readily available for the return of big sporting events.
The holiday season could be an increasingly important time for many organisers, although many will take a short break during the holiday season there will be a renewed focus on bringing things back as quickly as possible, particularly throughout the start of the year to recover from the issues experience at the start of this year – whilst many may not take note of the changes, its certainly difficult to ignore the huge success that has been seen and if there is any risk of future postponements, this may become an approach required by many especially as we see certain sporting events such as college football look to get back underway – player safety should be paramount, and if there’s any hope to have fans return to games too ensuring that protocols and protections are in place are paramount for sporting to return to a regular schedule and without future disruption.
