David Edelman can usually be found at a Denver Nuggets basketball game or a Colorado Rapids soccer game. As an usher, he interacts with fans in a role he calls a staple of his life.
However, there are no Nuggets games for at least a month. No Rapids games, either. And Edelman has no idea what he will do now.
“This is what I do for a living,” Edelman said this week as the realization hit that sports were going on hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “This is my income.”
Photo: Jeffrey Swinger-USA TODAY
Thousands of workers would have staffed the 450 NBA and NHL games that will not be played over the next month in response to the pandemic. Then there are the more than 300 spring-training and regular-season baseball games and about 50 Major League Soccer matches canceled or postponed because of the global health crisis.
The total economic impact of the loss of sports and other events because of the pandemic — assuming only a month shutdown — is impossible to calculate, but will reach the billions, easily.
Tickets are not being sold, so teams, leagues and organizing bodies lose money. Fans are not going to events that are not happening, so taxi drivers and ride-share operators have no one to ferry to and from those places. Hotel rooms will be empty. Beers and hot dogs are not being sold, so concessionaires and vendors lose money. Wait staff and bartenders are not getting tips. Without those tips, their babysitters are not getting paid.
The trickle-down effect sprawls in countless directions.
Some teams are trying to help. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, within minutes of the NBA shutdown announcement, said he wanted to find a way to help workers who will lose money because games will not be played.
By Friday, he had his plan.
“We will pay them as if the games happened,” he told reporters in an e-mail.
Other teams, including the Cleveland Cavaliers, have made similar commitments to workers at not just NBA events, but also the building’s minor-league hockey games.
The Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards, Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks were among the earliest NBA franchises to reveal that they are working on how they will take care of arena staff.
So have the NHL’s Washington Capitals, among others, and the ownership group for Detroit’s Pistons, Red Wings and Tigers on Friday said that they were setting up a US$1 million fund “to cover one month’s wages for our part-time staff for games, concerts and events that they would have otherwise worked.”
“Our teams, our cities and the leagues in which we operate are a family, and we are committed to looking out for one another,” New Jersey Devils owner Josh Harris said.
There were many more significant gifts revealed later on Friday.
Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans said he would “cover the salaries” for workers at the team’s arena for the next 30 days. Blake Griffin of the Detroit Pistons pledged US$100,000 for workers there, the San Jose Sharks said part-time arena workers would get paid for all games not played and Florida Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky said he was giving US$100,000 to workers in that club’s arena — a donation matched by his teammates and followed by another pledge from the team’s ownership group.
“This is a small way for me to express my support and appreciation for these wonderful people who have been so great to me and my teammates and hopefully we can all join together to relieve some of the stress and hardship caused by this national health crisis,” Williamson wrote on Instagram.
At Chicago Blackhawks hockey games alone, about 1,500 workers are in or outside the building on event nights: guest services, concessions, parking, security, box office and so on.
“The per game payroll is more than [US]$250,000,” said Courtney Greve Hack, a spokeswoman for the United Center.
If that is the NHL norm — no official numbers are available — then workers across the league would stand to lose more than US$60 million if ice hockey does not return this season.
“I get it, but this is going to be really tough,” said Chris Lee, who owns a coffee and smoothies franchise in Arizona that draws 70 percent of its annual revenue sales at spring training and Arizona Coyotes hockey games.
Lee was packing up cups that will not be used when baseball on Thursday announced that spring training was ending about two weeks early.
He and his staff — one full-timer and 14 part-time employees — were not sure what comes next.
The enormity of the numbers stacks up quickly.
The group that owns the Raptors and other pro sports clubs in Toronto, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, says it is trying to help 4,000 workers in that city.
In Philadelphia, Rodney Thompson works on commission selling popcorn and beer at 76ers basketball games, Flyers ice hockey games and Phillies baseball games. They are all on hold.
“The more I sell, the more I make,” the 56-year-old said. “The less I sell, the less I make. It would hurt me, financially. I would have no income coming in... I make pretty good money, but if there’s no fans, there’s no work.”
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