By Mucteba Gokcek
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a colossal impact on sports. Over the course of the past two years we saw how went into a sports game and how valuable fans were. So many events were postponed, and others were canceled. The NBA, for example, was immediately shut down after the first couple of cases of the coronavirus starting with the Jazz center, Rudy Gobert. The Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo were postponed to 2021 even though the name was kept “Tokyo 2020”. Similarly the UEFA Euro Championship was also postponed from 2020 to 2021. After the initial wave of cancellations we started to see all the games, tournaments, and events come to fruition. Through extensive quarantines and isolated locations, sports like the NBA and the Olympics brought back their games and events. All the sports that came back, fans were not allowed in attendance for a large part of 2021. This had a huge impact on the games as massive stadiums were quiet and all that could be heard was the players yelling. Teams tried to silence the silence by playing artificial sounds on the speakers so that fans and players could experience some of the excitement of fans.
Fans were slowly reintroduced to stadiums, but more recently, however, fans have been allowed to full capacity. This has finally brought back the excitement of fans screaming and cheering for their teams. Players in the NBA and NFL have not been required to be vaccinated, however, the NFL and the NBA have extensive COVID-19 protocols that players must follow, and this has caused many players to be unable to play. Kyrie Irving, for example, was unable to play for a large portion of this NBA season because of his vaccination status and New York’s requirements conflicting with each other. The pandemic has caused a lot of changes in sports and we have seen how valuable sports are for our lives. Hopefully, sports will not be canceled again and we can continue to enjoy sports the way that they aren’t to be enjoyed.
