Liability, unknowns amplified cancellations
There’s a reason The Players was canceled, the Masters, the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open were rescheduled and all major sports leagues and the NCAA Tournament shut down because of coronavirus, and it’s not just because it’s safe.
It’s liability.
Nobody knew (knows?) how to deal with COVID-19, but they know they can’t operate as business as usual. Once one league shut down, the others knew they had to follow or they would be on an island.
An expensive island.
“The enemy here is incomplete information,” said Rick Horrow, a sports business expert from Harvard Law School. “Everybody believes there’s a reasonable response, but nobody knows what that response is.
“Could you imagine somebody spreading the virus in a population center like a basketball gym because you had an event that had one or more infected attendees? That would cause opportunity for liability that nobody wants now.”
