Is bubble sport viable in the long term?

An NHL game between the Golden Knights and the Canucks, in Edmonton, August 30, 2020. -

• The Tour de France, the US Open, the NBA, the Champions League ... The organizers of major sporting events have adopted a very strict protocol so that the competitions can be held and save the essential. 

• Contacts between athletes and the outside world are banned when possible, or at least reduced to their strict minimum.

• These sanitary bubbles made it possible to deal with the most urgent, but what will happen in a few months, when it will be necessary to set out again for a complete season or ensure the economic sustainability of an entire ecosystem?

We liked Clairefontaine.

The last kilometers through the forest, the fresh air when you get out of the car, the calm and serenity of a place covered by the imposing Castle.

In a week of work in the heart of Paris, breathing was not unpleasant.

The Clairefontaine from the Covid period is a little less exotic.

A keyboard, a screen, questions sent in writing, answers via a video received on a WhatsApp thread, and presto, here is Didier Deschamps' back-to-school press conference packed.

It all lacks a little smell of freshly mown grass.

It's like that, we'll have to get used to it.

Sport has resumed, but with very strict health protocols.

We won't complain.

Anyone who is even slightly interested in sports has realized how meaningless their life is (let's stay moderate of course) with no matches or races to be eaten.

So for now, whether it is on the side of athletes, the public or followers, everyone is putting good will into it.

We're just happy that there can be competitions, so go for bubble sport, the only way to avoid unpleasant surprises - we see it with Ligue 1 and the Top 14, faced with the problem of postponements.

But after ?

In three months, six months, a year?

While waiting for a potential vaccine on which we have no certainty today, the WHO "hopes to end this pandemic in less than two years".

Until the end of 2022, will we be content with closed doors, impossible contacts, two-meter-high barriers that prevent even seeing the champions?

"Yes yes, I can see there" - Frederic DIDES / SIPA

Beyond the trivial anecdote about our personal feelings, the question is seriously posed for journalists.

And so for you, the readers.

On the Tour de France, at the US Open, in the follow-up of the French football team, to talk about what currently occupies us, the coverage of the event is taking a hit.

When it is the press officers who provide the athletes' reactions via messages, as can be the case on the Tour, it is no longer really information but communication.

Even if everyone is doing the best they can.

"Everyone is drunk", sums up a colleague present on the Grande Boucle.

Nothing replaces the mixed zone to feel the emotions of athletes and transcribe as closely as possible everything that has been played on the lawn, the floor or the road, beyond the raw result.

Of course, if we talk about football, it had already been reduced to its minimum portion for a few years, but here the light is completely extinguished.

On the side of the village, the mixed media zone is almost deserted.

Marc Madiot came to answer before the start.

Not sure others are coming.

#TourdeFrance pic.twitter.com/nITMfZZBfQ

- Sebastien Noé (@Sebastiennoe) August 29, 2020

More important (surely), the feelings of the actors themselves.

The US Open has barely started and the bubble is already threatening to explode.

Tested positive and excluded from the table on Sunday, Benoît Paire let loose on Instagram.

“I hesitate to share what's really going on in this FAKE BUBBLE,” he wrote, annoyed.

An exit which led to others and through which we understand that the protocol is variable geometry.

Tournament employees dealing with transport, medical or security can go home and come back with a temperature measurement as the only access condition.

An asymptomatic can therefore bring in the virus.

"It's more of a secure environment than a bubble," Adrian Mannarino explained at a press conference.

So we can run out of luck at one time or another.

"

In an Instagram story, @benoitpaire gives reassuring news about his state of health but no longer seems to digest the bubbles.

pic.twitter.com/3YBPCDeKHc

- Game, Set and Math (@JeuSetMaths) August 31, 2020

This debate on impermeability is important, because a positive test has wide consequences, notably psychological, for those concerned and for those called “contact cases”.

Example with Kristina Mladenovic, who had played cards with Paire in recent days.

Now confined to her room, she no longer has the right to go to the common areas of the hotel, no longer has access to the cloakroom or the dining room, must use a gym as well as specific warm-up and training and by reservation.

It's not easy to find sleep in these conditions.

“I was living a nightmare.

I was not sure I could play, she said after her first round victory over Hailey Baptiste on Sunday.

I am mentally washed out.

"

Another country, another sport, same impact.

In China, the leaders of the football Super League have instituted two containment bubbles for the start of the season.

The 16 teams have been compartmentalized for a month in two privatized hotels, until the end of September.

The time is a bit long.

“When I think about being locked in four walls for the next month and a half, my head is spinning, so I don't dare to think too much,” one player told

.

According to the news site, many have reached "a psychologically critical period".

What about the next NBA season?

In the NBA bubble in Orlando, players, if they miss their families, are generally satisfied with their situation.

The matches are linked, anyway.

The end of the season is saved, but what about the next one?

"Nobody wants to stay six months in a bubble, it's insane," is aware Michèle Roberts, executive director of the players' union of the American League, questioned by SiriusXM radio.

A plan with several places closed and 100% devoted to franchises would be under consideration.

“We cannot rule out this option.

There would be several bubbles, with a time out of the bubble, ”she added.

Are the players ready for this?

We do not know about basketball players, but on the tennis side, some have already warned.

If all of these restrictions were to continue in 2021, choices will have to be made.

"There may be some who like it, but I don't take any pleasure in being here [in New York]," Jérémy Chardy said in

Monday.

If it's playing tennis without having fun, that gets me drunk.

I said to my team: "If it's like that, apart from Roland where I would like to play all the time, I don't think I'm going to play a lot of tournaments."

"

Playing with fire 😅

📸 Alizé Cornet / Instagram pic.twitter.com/83XemsfL63

- We Are Tennis France (@WeAreTennisFR) August 19, 2020

There is also the lack created by the absence of supporters.

“Football without an audience is not the same thing.

The game is made for people, and it is valid for all sports, ”noted Italian coach Roberto Mancini at a press conference on Sunday.

Playing in front of empty stands or just like obviously doesn't have the same flavor.

And for “active” supporters, coming to the stadium with restricted freedoms is not an option.

“We cannot support our team as it should.

This is why we have taken the decision to go neither to the Parc des Princes nor on the move until the situation changes, ”for example warned the Collective Ultras Paris.

The same goes for the Red Tigers from the Marek stand in Lens and for the Ultras in Lorient, Nîmes or Angers.

The general public will see what they can, without being too greedy.

“It's better than nothing”, as we heard in the streets of Nice before the start of the Tour.

You have a message @PSG_inside @CupSolidarite pic.twitter.com/jRETUe8apU

- Ultras Paris Collective (@Co_Ultras_Paris) August 30, 2020

Towards new relationships between clubs and their audience?

Not very encouraging, all that.

This situation could however "accelerate the reflections on the relationship 2.0 between the club and its supporters," said Pierre Rondeau.

The sports economist discussed it recently with Frédéric Weis, the former basketball player turned consultant.

The French championship no longer has a broadcaster, after the withdrawal of RMC Sport, and the ex-pivot is looking for a way to maintain the link between his sport and the public.

One of the tracks is inspired by the much maligned social network OnlyFans.

Not of its content, of course, but rather of its economic model.

Pierre Rondeau's explanations:

“You have to pay to subscribe to someone, who gives you access to premium content.

It's social network elitism.

The goal would be to create a sort of Sports OnlyFans, to tell people "since you can't come to the stadium, we will come to your place".

In exchange for two or three euros per month, they will have access to press conferences, the locker room, the post-match, they will be able to chat with players via Instagram lives or other.

If 30,000 people pay 3 euros per month, it is a significant inflow of money in the majority of sports.

"

In summary, we must find a way to recover the money that does not fit in the boxes by purchasing grandstand seats in another way.

In France, Ligue 1 is quiet for the season, with the increase in TV rights and the loan guaranteed by the State.

Rugby is going to have to get started.

In April, in full confinement, the president of the Union Bordeaux Bègles Laurent Marti recalled that "80% of the receipts of the clubs [of the Top 14] are made at the stadium, for 20% of television rights".

"The pandemic will accelerate two processes already underway," explains Robin Fasel, head of an agency specializing in the creation of digital experiences, to our colleagues from

.

One aims to empower sports entities to empower themselves from the match, [ie] generate interest throughout the week and not just on match day.

The other process aims to "gamify" sport so that it remains attractive to younger generations who are passionate about video games.

"

What show for television?

There remains the question of the value of the “sport product” for television channels.

In constant increase, it could suffer from a spectacle now reduced to its simplest expression.

The post-containment audiences, especially the Final 8 of the Champions League, were very good.

But how do you know if it was not just the withdrawal effect or the presence of French clubs?

“We'll have to see if it continues over time,” notes Rondeau.

The way it was filmed, with cameras closer to the field, and the improvement in sound management, with this new job almost as a “stadium ambianceur” in control, showed that it could work.

The question is whether, in the long term, there will not be some sort of consumer withdrawal.

If this is the case, it is no longer sanitary bubbles that we will talk about.

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