Opinion Behind closed doors

Spectators are the oxygen for sports — there has been a concerted drive to make sports spectator-friendly, tweaking the game to woo more audience.

Football coach Pep Guardiola has an unshakeable belief in playing the beautiful game in a beautiful way. His views on playing football inside closed doors: “You have to ask whether it is worth playing football without the spectators.” Yet he agrees that in these trying times, sports must rearrange the field, or rather the stands. More so for the year-long leagues, hurtling into the home stretch of their annual engagement. Leagues can’t afford to postpone the schedule by even six or seven months, let alone by a year, like the European or COPA Championships. For them to culminate meaningfully, and for the respective sports to not plunge into a financial gorge, the events have to be held. Doing it behind closed doors is the most pragmatic solution.

Spectators are the oxygen for sports — there has been a concerted drive to make sports spectator-friendly, tweaking the game to woo more audience. But in these desperate times, closed-door sport is not one of the options, but the only option. Just imagine the chaos it would unleash if the English Premier League remains uncompleted. Liverpool might be runaway leaders, but what of the other leagues, the relegation battle, the promotion tussle of the lower divisions, player contracts, and the transfer window?

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Gate sales account for nearly 14 per cent of the revenues of European football clubs, but most of the big clubs have them insured. Less so for broadcasters and sponsors, for whom the swathe of cancellations has already left deep holes, with an average dip of 10 per cent in advertorials. The EPL telecast rights are worth 9.2 billion pounds, Star Sports, the host broadcaster of the IPL, coughs up around Rs 3,300 crore annually. Clubs and franchises have commercial contracts based on brand exposure, matches being broadcast and/or dependent on spectators in the stadium. Closed-door action is no blueprint for the future, just a practical step in anxious times.