The coronavirus crisis has hit many areas of our daily lives and the sports world is not an exception. Most tournaments and leagues from all around the globe are suspended indefinitely and we don’t know when they will return officially.
The best betting sites even have odds on potential restart date and the situation is obviously unclear. And yet, there are certain ways to build an educated guess on when could the most popular sports leagues return and that’s the goal of this post.
The NBA
All US sports are out and there is no clear timetable right now. President Donald Trump has mentioned a couple of times already that he wants sports back and that the most popular American leagues can have a positive impact on people’s lives under such tough circumstances.
There’s little doubt that the coronavirus hit the NBA the hardest. We saw a couple of big stars get sick and the league was suspended just a month or so before the start of the playoffs.
According to the latest report, the organization is working hard to find a solution. There are propositions to isolate the teams in a single location and continue the NBA there, without fans. While this has met a lot of resistance, it could be the way to proceed.
It won’t happen anytime soon, though, so the realistic evaluation is that we likely won’t see any NBA games before the middle of May, at the very least. Somewhere in June is the sensible guess at this point.
The English Premier League
Another widely popular league that was reaching its climax when the coronavirus hit is the English Premier League. There are less than 10 full rounds left and Liverpool was cruising towards the title when the tournament was paused.
We’ve heard all kinds of versions of what’s going to happen next and some even included a scenario that would’ve seen the 2019-20 season canceled. That’s highly unlikely for various reason and the fact that EURO 2020 was postponed for 2021 certainly helps.
The Premier League could be concluded during the summer and that’s what a report from the middle of April suggests. The clubs might be back in training in the second half of May, so the logical assumption is that we could see some English Premier League matches in June.
That would give around 2 months for the league to finish and would work if the start of the next season is postponed by a couple of weeks.
The UEFA Leagues
The UEFA Champions League and Europa League didn’t avoid the fate of the other top football tournaments on the continent. This one is really tough to predict and while the English Premier League will almost certainly return, there are a lot of doubts if the same will happen with CL and the EL.
The leagues feature teams from various countries which makes it hard to predict when all contestants could be available to continue. If you add the fact that the domestic tournaments will likely have to be completed under a busy schedule with more games to leave enough time for the start of the 2020-21 season, it’s hard to imagine where the UEFA competitions fit in.
Despite the organization’s best efforts, we could very likely see both the Champions League and the Europa league canceled.
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