LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) Empty seats have been the norm the past few
years at the University of Kansas, where a succession of football
coaches has failed to turn around the flailing fortunes of the
Jayhawks.
Now, all those open seats – and short lines and quiet concourses –
will be the norm in stadiums just about everywhere.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced universities, leagues and
franchises to evaluate how they might someday welcome back fans.
While opinions vary from sport to sport, nation to nation and even
state to state, one thing seems clear: Social distancing is a sure
bet when fans return. So don’t expect 100,000-plus fans packed into
Michigan Stadium for a football game this fall or 16,300 seated
inside Kansas’ storied Allen Fieldhouse when college basketball
season rolls around.
”We don’t know how we’ll be coming back,” Jayhawks athletic
director Jeff Long acknowledged. ”We’ve modeled 15 to 16,000 in
Memorial Stadium, and to be honest with you, we’ve modeled Allen
Fieldhouse, and I can’t bring myself to look at it because I know
how few people it will be and that’s upsetting.”
Most colleges rely heavily on ticket sales, souvenirs and
concessions in football and basketball to raise the bottom line to
the point that non-revenue sports can be fully funded. But smaller
crowds are going to be necessary to ensure proper social distancing
– in pro sports around the globe, too. Forbes estimates the NFL
would lose $5.5 billion in stadium revenue if all games are played
without fans, and the fallout for other leagues without lucrative
TV deals could be catastrophic.
The virus that causes COVID-19 is most easily spread when an
infected person coughs, sneezes or talks and the droplets spread to
people nearby. That’s why guidelines from the Centers for Disease
Control and World Health Organization preach separation in public
as an effective safeguard.
In a stadium, though, creating that kind of buffer is no easy task.
Most fans tend to file through the gates at the same time, creating
a bottleneck in which thousands could be in close proximity. They
gather in concourses to chat or buy food, drinks and merchandise.
They stand in lines at restrooms. They surge toward the exits at
the end of the game.
Most teams and leagues have not publicly revealed their plans for
fall sports, though some are up front about what to expect. Iowa
State is looking at selling only enough tickets to fill up half of
Jack Trice Stadium for football games and Notre Dame has warned of
fewer fans and limits to tailgating. The Miami Dolphins released a
number of ideas under consideration: using every-other turnstile,
calling fans into the stadium in sections, letting them out row by
row like a church service and using technology to minimize
person-to-person contact.
Once fans return, partitioning off seats will become crucial. And
those won’t just be empty seats. Teams and leagues are
investigating the use of temporary banners spread across entire
sections that can then be sold for sponsorship, helping to bridge
the gap caused by unsold tickets. Such banners are already used to
create a more intimate settings for concerts or other events, and
Bristol Motor Speedway had some of them strung up for last
weekend’s NASCAR race in Tennessee.
Another idea is to turn sections of 20 or more individual or bench
seats into temporary suites, where a group of 10 friends and family
members can be socially distant from other groups – and potentially
selling them for a higher price.
”There are a lot of different things you can do,” said R.J. Orr,
whose Arizona-based firm Bluemedia specializes in such ”seat
kills” and temporary structures. They already have worked with
Arizona State and other schools on similar projects.
The next challenge is keeping fans socially distant when they do
leave their seats. A company called WaitTime has software
applications tied to security cameras that allow fans and stadium
operators to know on monitors or apps just how busy certain areas
might be. A motion analytics company, iinside, uses lidar sensors
to detect unsafe crowding.
”We’re working on tools to overlay crowd density on top of stadium
maps,” iinside CEO Sam Kamel said. ”These maps would then tell
fans where to avoid, or when it’s `safe’ to get a hot dog or Coke
and when the food court isn’t too crowded.”
There is little dispute that the game-day experience will be vastly
different.
At baseball games in Taiwan, up to 1,000 spectators have been
allowed into the ballpark, but they were barred from bringing food,
concession stands are closed and they are told to sit three seats
apart. During a recent Fubon Guardians game in New Taipei City,
about 900 people showed up at its 12,500-seat stadium, leaning
across empty seats to talk with friends and moving on their own to
cues from cheerleaders and mascots.
”There’s plenty of social distance here,” said Guardians fan Sun
Ming, who works in finance in New Taipei City.
It could be that way for quite a while.
—
AP Sports Writers Dave Campbell, Larry Lage and John Pye
contributed to this report.
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TTWN Media Networks Inc.
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