The impact of Covid19 on non professional sports by The Outlaw Micheal Tomsik

One of my favorite thing I did in my career with Outlaw Sports Radio and Outlaw Sports Entertainment was cover sports that are considered non professional. I always believed that these sports had a true heart because the people involved in the sport did not get paid or if they did it was a little amount and even sometimes the players paid to play.

I covered several leagues that are called PAY TO PLAY leagues as where the players pay a fee to play the game. The money usually goes for uniforms, travel expenses, renting fields, and paying referees. There are no multi million dollar contracts, commercial deals, or advertising money. Often these games had a local and small following but that did not mean the love of the game was not there.

Since 2020 a virus called COvid19 rampaged the USA and still is ongoing today, for the first time in history we saw sports completely shut down for around 2 months. Today months later sports have found ways to deal with the Covid19 virus but at what cost.

One of the most popular leagues the NFL has lost millions of dollars because no fans in the stands, the NBA turned to what was referred as a bubble again with no fans. The MLB and NHL also following these steps, and college football as well.

No one can really tell what the dollar amount of the covid19 has cost in losses but estimates are near 12 billion dollars. In an industry that creates over 30 billion dollars in revenues that is a pretty big loss.

So what about the leagues I am talking about that make it by local donations, players paying into the system, and have little or no room to make bubbles, or resources to help prevent the covid19 virus.

Unfortunately many leagues, teams, and sports had to close down. Though this may not have the impact that pro sports has it still impacts the towns, cities, players, families, fans and economy of where these teams are.

Many times these teams play on fields or arenas that are rented at colleges, local community centers, or high schools. There are tickets sold for the games , and fans that come to the games, there are food vendors, and other revenues made from these sports that have gone dry.

Once again the main stream media focus on all the pro sports and college football/basketball because these sports bring in millions of dollars in games and leagues for the Bowl games and March Madness tournament.

That was what I wanted out of my sports company and that is what we did we covered the little sports leagues, the teams and players no one talks about. I miss that a lot and hope and pray that covid19 does not ruin the smaller leagues forever.

The impact can be seen even here where I live in Springfield, Missouri where fields are empty, no practices, no games, no players, no fans, no food vendors, no tickets being sold, no advertising just an empty stadium.

Even for me as a small sports media and production company it has shut my company down because that is what my company did was cover these sports we are talking about the LITTLE ONES!

Will it ever be the same again it is hard to tell even with news of a vaccination coming, the news on Covid19 is extended out into 20201 so we may not see any normal activity for quite a while in the smaller sports areas.

When and if they do start to come back your community can help by supporting these smaller sports leagues and teams.

The Outlaw Micheal Tomsik