Sports are going to extreme lengths to make games happen this year — like the NBA confining tournaments to a Disney World sports complex.
If these games happen, stands will likely be empty to help enforce social distancing and limit instances of possible coronavirus spread. This is a tricky compromise for teams to make: Broadcasting contracts earn some leagues a lot of money, but empty stands make for an awkward experience for viewers at home, says Hyun-Woo Lee, a fan behavior researcher at Texas A&M University. To keep fans interested during and after these unusual games, some teams might have to put more effort into simulating all that makes live sports appealing in the first place, he says.
Whatever solutions they devise might also need to address some other fan issues, too. “The pandemic is just a new chapter in a long-standing story of attendance problems that many teams and ...
