USA TODAY International Edition
A ‘ golden month’ for sports fans could be coming
TV networks and sports leagues won’t make up the billions of dollars in COVID- 19- related losses easily. But an unprecedented 34- day stretch of potential programming will certainly help.
With the NBA approving a plan to return to play, Major League Baseball lurching toward an expected agreement and the Masters rescheduled to November, an already crowded sports calendar will be, pandemic willing, overloaded with premium content.
Consider this potential timeline:
❚ Game 7 of the NBA Finals would be slated for Oct. 12.
❚ Baseball’s playoffs will likely be expanded, commencing in early October and finishing up on or around Nov. 1.
❚ Come October, college football will be on the airwaves at least five days a week, and the NFL, of course, will be into the heart of its season.
❚ And oh, yeah, the Masters is set to start Nov. 12.
With a dearth of fresh network programming due to Hollywood’s limitations within a pandemic, conditions are favorable for a sports windfall.
“We may be going into a unique golden month in the annals of broadcasting,” says Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp, a Chicago firm that consults for MLB, the NFL and NBA, among other. “Ad buyers have been saving their buys. There’s no new programs with Hollywood being shut down.
“Come November, there will be very little new programming available, both for broadcast networks and streaming services. You’ll just have to coordinate so you don’t have World Series games going up against NFL games.”
It all could go awry – or at least a portion of it – due to further spread, or a second wave, of the novel coronavirus.
Failing that, leagues and networks should still have relatively captive audiences confined largely to their homes either by government order or personal choice. Certainly, few if any fans will be allowed to attend games in person, and the NBA is planning to stage its entire season in a fan- free bubble in Orlando.
While a presidential election will command significant eyeballs and ad dollars, the calendar is once again an ally: The election falls on Nov. 3, five days earlier than the 2016 election.
“Come late November,” says Ganis, “I imagine they’ll be dying for non- election coverage.”