With games and events at a standstill, Sports Business Journal reached out to our readers to see how they have been directly affected by the global coronavirus pandemic and to gauge their thoughts on the future of sports and their businesses.
Forty-one percent of sports executives believe that live sports will return, potentially without fans, by the end of June, and about one-third say their company may not make it through 2020 if games don’t return, according to the survey conducted by SBJ and YouGov.
The survey was made available from April 10-15 to all SBJ and Sports Business Daily subscribers with the goal of determining some of the ways COVID-19 has impacted the sports industry. More than half of the 952 SBJ readers who completed the online survey identified themselves as senior management.
In other results, only about 10% of respondents feel that the NBA and NHL should attempt to make up postponed regular-season games. At the other extreme, each of those leagues should just end their seasons now and focus on next season, according to more than one-quarter of the executives.
And a statistic that could have unfortunately already risen by the time you read this: Approximately 60% of respondents said that their company has already furloughed and/or reduced the salaries of their employees.
We began rolling out the survey results in our SBJ Unpacks: Coronavirus newsletter on April 16 and will continue to share findings throughout this week in the newsletter and SBD.
