As claimed by the UK government about 3 weeks ago, the pandemics should have been nothing serious… should have, but all changed in the last 24 hours. The number of COVID-19 victims in the UK increased from 475 to 578. That was the highest number of corona-related deaths in only 1 day.
That is however only one reason why football became insignificant. Second one is the news about unemployment and possible economical catastrophe from all over the World. Norway, one of the richest countries, reports 10,4% unemployment. Such high levels in this country have not been seen over the last 30 years. Moving over to America, according to Department of Labor data in the US, over 3.28 million people registered to claim unemployment benefits during the last week. This is the highest number since 1982, when the number reached only 695 000. Compared to the US the social security system in the UK seems to have some bigger airbags and guarantees reach up to £2500 per month, but this is just the beginning of the crisis.
What do the football numbers say?
Third reason for football taking the backseat is not surprising – there is nothing going on. Sure, you can still watch the action in Nepal, Angola or Hong-Kong but why would you do that? Do people still read the football news and watch some previous games or highlights?
Many football page webmasters confirmed a significant drop in their traffic that goes up to 75%. This decrease further leads to a drop in advertising income, cutting many freelancer jobs. Lacking the action, the articles are becoming phony-sounding and boring. Re-posting football highlights from previous years became a standard. Big English football moments, nicest goals or best matches? Sure, but after a short period of time the readers will become bored of that.
For now humankind can not really speed-up the healing process. We however see some positivity as people from different regions and countries stick together like never before. Let’s hope this will continue as we go through the misery. Who knows, at the end there might be a whole new World – a better one.