Sports were an outlet to keep many sane during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and they continue to be in 2021 as well. So it is comically ironic that some of the practices being conducted to ensure the safety of the players and fans are so insane.
In this first part, I will be sticking with the public health concern of fans in attendance. Because baseball is out of season and both the NBA and NHL have yet to allow fans back in stadiums, I will mostly be discussing the NFL here. Part two will focus on the athletes themselves and get into other leagues.
Fans in the stands are a paradox right now. The only reason franchises and leagues are pushing for attendance is because of gate revenue. To better understand how the NFL works, you should know that their earnings come from two different areas–the league revenue and local revenue. League revenue includes the large television rights deals and merchandising, among other big-scale money making strategies. This money is equally distributed to the 32 franchises. Even though a team like the Dallas Cowboys is more popular and financially successful than the Jacksonville Jaguars, both teams receive the same amount of league revenue. So in essence, buying a Tom Brady Buccaneers jersey is still helping out the Patriots. Local revenue is all for the teams to keep, though. If a team sells more tickets and hotdogs, they will earn more than a team with low attendance.
Local revenues have been tanked by the pandemic. Television rights deals are more or less, unaffected, assuming all the games are played eventually. Before analyzing how dangerous maskless fans are, it is important to understand how the local revenue is broken down.
According to Jakob Eckstein of “Investopedia,” only 8% of ticket sales are profit on average. It roughly translates to $5,600,000 in profit per season (10 total home games including preseason) after expenses for the teams have been paid. Concessions can bring in up to $5,000,000 in revenue if a team is selling snacks and beverages at a high enough rate, yet, the profit margins can be more than 90% on these items, making them nearly as valuable.
With attendance capacities being severely truncated, the best way to make back that money is by selling concessions. There is a massive problem with that, though. To drink your beer, you need to remove your mask. You would hope everyone would take a sip and immediately reaffix their mask, but just watch any broadcast when they show the fans. There are a significant amount of people maskless. If the goal of reducing the maximum occupancy is to prevent the spread of a highly contagious virus, you cannot encourage the sale of maskless interactions as well, i.e. eating and drinking.
The danger may not be initially apparent. Heck, there is outdoor dining where people are close together eating and drinking, all while maskless. But the major difference between someone having a mimosa at brunch and a bratwurst at Soldier Field is that one of them is screaming his or her head off, flinging potentially virus-infected particles into the air.
In an article by Derick Thompson of The Atlantic, Professor Jose Jimenez, a disease transmission specialist at the University of Colorado Boulder, claims that the levels at which you speak change the number of droplets and aerosols you expel. Yelling is the worst, speaking is better, whispering is better yet and silence is the best. Say it don’t spray it might be onto something. “Compared with yelling, quiet talking reduces aerosols by a factor of five; being completely silent reduces them by a factor of about 50. That means talking quietly, rather than yelling, reduces the risk of viral transmission by a degree comparable to properly wearing a mask,” said Jimenez.
Practically speaking, the virus spreading capability of someone cheering on Patrick Mahomes on a game-winning drive in between bites of a soft pretzel is extreme. If you are in the stands, you are in the danger zone.
No one is going to be able to enforce a policy of “no cheering while eating.” It is impossible to stop sudden reactions to moments of excitement. The only way to ensure that people are constantly wearing a mask–or at least a better compliance rate–is to remove concessions altogether. Restricting food and beverages to just water would drastically lower the amount of disease-spreading shouts, yet the NFL would stand to lose out on additional revenue.
But a pack of peanuts, and even the ticket itself, barely compare to television rights deals that bring each team over 50% of their revenue. There is still an enormous amount of money being left on the table due to the pandemic and needing to cap stadium attendance. However, the revenue earned from a tray of stale nachos is negligible when compared to all the other revenues brought in.
The bottom line is the NFL is greedy. I am a football fan through and through. But to say that they are potentially jeopardizing lives at the cost of a percent of their total revenue is not unjust. Micahel Long of SportsPro Media reported that the Green Bay Packers–the only publicly owned NFL franchise–earned over half a billion dollars for the 2019-2020 season/fiscal year. Being liberal and assuming the Packers made $5,000,000 in concessions, that is less than a percent of the team’s total earnings. And that is in a normal year. With fewer fans to buy concessions, that percentage shrank even more.
The league and teams are desperate to recoup lost revenue anywhere possible. So if you are one of the few thousand fans allowed into Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay next weekend, maybe have a filling lunch at home before heading to the stadium. Help protect your fellow fan, because the NFL rather sell an $11 beer than take the necessary steps to keep you safe.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for bringing attention to the issues surrounding the NFL during the COVID-19 pandemic. I never realized how much of an impact something like concessions could have on the overall spread of the virus throughout these stadiums. It seems as though many major leagues, like the NFL have begun to prioritize overall profits, rather than the well-being of their fans. I also agree that taking out concessions would require fans to keep their masks on for the entirety of a game, and in turn lower the potential spread of germs that come along with being maskless in a public space. Hopefully major league sports teams will catch on to this soon even after the vaccine has been…