Sports Recovery amid COVID-19 Pandemic: A Focus on Football and Lessons for the Future

David Chikodzi, Godwell Nhamo () and Kaitano Dube ()
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David Chikodzi: Institute for Corporate Citizenship, University of South Africa (UNISA)
Godwell Nhamo: Institute for Corporate Citizenship, University of South Africa (UNISA)
Kaitano Dube: Vaal University

Chapter Chapter 12 in COVID-19, Tourist Destinations and Prospects for Recovery, 2023, pp 217-237 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt worldwide by all sectors of the economy, and the sporting arena is no exception. The pandemic led to a complete and historical global shutdown of sporting events and sports tourism by default. As a critical international sport, football was one of the most impacted. This chapter assesses the preliminary recovery pathways of football from the impacts of COVID-19 as several significant associations resume play. Critical document analysis was the primary method utilised, with documents obtained from Deloitte sports analysis, Deutsche Bank, Yahoo Finance and Sports Value Analysis. The results show that most football resumed during the pandemic without live fans, leading to a loss of match day revenue. Under pessimistic/realistic scenarios, football clubs lost up to 31% of their usual revenue, resulting in substantially reduced profit margins. Shares for listed football clubs also plunged steeply during the early days of the pandemic (February–March 2020). However, they managed a v-shaped recovery between April and June 2020, although they were still underperforming. It emerged that a strong appetite for live sporting events worldwide was likely to guide the anticipated quick recovery of football. By resuming early during the pandemic, football benefited from solid capital consumption. However, the football fraternity needed to protect players from muscle-skeletal injuries due to the sudden resumption of matches, which followed a long period of detraining. This chapter recommends that the football ecosystem and value chain come together and create new and ground-breaking solutions to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 on revenue, athletes, fans and the greater society.

Keywords: COVID-19; Recovery; Sports tourism; SDGs; Football; Consumption Capital Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-22257-3_12

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-22257-3_12

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