Champs void a multimillion-dollar loss

The cancellation of this year’s ISSA-GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships is set to cause a huge economic fallout, with over $150 million in direct losses and hundreds of millions more in unfulfilled incidental earnings expected.

Jamaica confirmed its first case of the deadly COVID-19 on Tuesday, which led to the Government’s decision to cancel the more-than-century-old high-school athletics championship after meetings with ISSA and title sponsors GraceKennedy yesterday.

A second case, which, like the first, was imported, was announced yesterday.

Boys’ Champs will be absent from the sporting calendar for the first time since 1944. This will be the fourth edition of Girls’ Champs to be scrapped since 1960. The hugely popular championships were merged in 1999.

Some 5,000 athletes, coaches, and support staff were expected to be at the track and field carnival, with some of the top schools spending between $6 million and $8 million on gear, nutrition programmes, housing, transportation, and coaching fees in preparation for the March 24-28 event.

Lost revenue from hotel accommodation for fans, international media, coaches, and scouts, along with transportation, sponsorship, advertising, media partnerships, and other engagements, will trigger a significant fall-off in earnings for related industries, leaving at least two local sports marketing experts to argue that staging the event without spectators would have been a better alternative.

Sports marketer and media strategist O’Neil Walters, who negotiated corporate sponsorship for the local market for ISSA back in 2012, says the biggest losers following the cancellation are the athletes.

He believes that the organisers could have found a way to let the athletes still compete behind closed doors and utilise broadcast mechanisms to bring the action to the public.

“The cancellation of Champs will leave a very big void due to the national importance of the event, which has become a cultural showpiece in Jamaica,” said Walters. “The athletes, who have worked all year round with a lot of time and sacrifice, will be the ones who lose out as they will not get to perform, and you don’t get back these moments.”

BIGGEST EARNER

Champs is undoubtedly the biggest income earner for ISSA, with the haemorrhage set to cost $100 million in cash and kind in sponsorship, plus another $30 million from gate receipts, and an additional $20 million from broadcast-rights fees.

“We could have still done Champs without spectators as the technology that we have now can facilitate bringing the action not only into our homes, but on mobile devices so everybody can still get to see the athletes perform,” Walters added.

Sports management consultant Carole Beckford also shares those sentiments, arguing that organisers could have adopted a restricted-attendance policy.

Beckford had recommended that only athletes, team management, officials, and accredited media over the five days could have been allowed into the venue, with everyone else watching from home and abroad.

Several sporting organisations across the world, including the NCAA, have adopted the restricted-attendance policy.

The NBA yesterday announced that it was suspending the basketball season after a player was infected with SARS-CoV-2.