The sports organization world has been scrambling and brainstorming how to continue their leagues through the coronavirus pandemic.
Leagues from across the nation like the NBA, XFL and NHL, to leagues across the world like the English Premier League, La Liga and Ligue 1 have been shutting down and cancelling any remainder of the season. The pandemic has affected all sorts of functions and leagues are struggling to determine exactly what to do.

Around the beginning of April, the EPL attempted to solve that problem by announcing that it would continue its league behind closed doors at the beginning of May. The plan included isolating everyone needed for every team in hotels, making sure they were free of the virus before doing so. This was done in an attempt to avoid a £762 million (about $950 million) rebate to television stations since they signed a contract to air their leagues.

After much deliberation from all 20 teams in a meeting organized by the league, they decided to rescind the decision and start at a different time if possible.

“The restart date is under constant review with all stakeholders, as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic develops and we work together through this very challenging time,” a statement from the league read.
Across the Atlantic, the NBA is quite certain that things won’t go smoothly for a while.

“Essentially what I’ve told my folks over the last week is we should just accept that at least for the month of April, we won’t be in a position to make any decisions,” Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, said in an interview with TNT. “I don’t think that necessarily means that, on May 1, we will be [able to make a decision], but at least I know that just to settle everyone down a little bit.”

The pandemic is hard to predict and hard to plan around since it’s everchanging and unpredictable. Another problem that has come of this is player salaries; should they even get paid for not doing anything?

Most players would say yes since they signed a contract. NBA players are getting their full paychecks despite not playing a single game in a month. Over in Europe, players are taking pay cuts for some teams, coming to an agreement with their teams and donating the cut salaries to organizations fighting the coronavirus.

There’s a multitude of actions that can be taken to try and help fix this issue and get sports going again. Let’s just hope it’s sooner rather than later because I want to watch some sports!