As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in cancellation of sports leagues and shuttered stadiums around the world, several countries’ soccer leagues stand as outliers.
The Belarus Premier League never ceased play and is the only European league still active, with its stands remaining open to fans. However, teams are drawing fractions of their normal attendance due to fears about the virus and active encouragement from players to stay away, despite no formal league mandate.
The country is under the direction of Alexander Lukashenko, the first (and only) president of Belarus, who assumed the office in 1994 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The leader, who some have accused of being an authoritarian dictator, has shirked calls to impose lockdowns similar to those of other European countries, as he donned hockey gear for an amateur match while most other heads of state were minimizing their exposure to others. “There are no viruses here. Did you see any flying around? I don’t see them either,” he told a reporter during the match.
This lax strategy in combating the virus has given Belarus’ soccer league the leeway to remain open in an unprecedented time, one that has generated an interest in Belarusian football for a sports-starved audience. The league is turning the occasion into a business opportunity by selling TV contracts to be broadcast in India and Russia. And for the vast majority of fans who are new to football in Belarus, superfans have put together quizzes (https://belarusfootball.outgrow.us/belarusfootball) so that prospective new fans can find a team to root for that matches their personality. Moreover, to ease the language barrier, fluent fans in the UK have been translating player and team information so that newcomers can have a better idea of the playing field, and amateur commentators have begun honing their craft by covering such games.
The Taiwan Football Premier League began Sunday (in addition to the Chinese Professional Baseball League, which debuted the same day) after aggressive measures taken to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The island has reported fewer than 400 cases out of its nearly 25 million citizens, which has been attributed to Taiwan’s foresighted policies introduced quickly after the first cases were reported in Wuhan. Although stadiums are still closed to fans to prevent additional spread of the virus, games can be streamed on the league’s YouTube page.
Play in Tajikistan, Burundi and Nicaragua also continues as most soccer leagues have shut down or delayed their start date. While Burundi suspended its league play on Monday, the hold was not due to COVID-19 (which has reportedly infected a small proportion of the country’s population), but rather due to scheduling conflicts in stadiums as the country prepares to hold rallies in advance of its upcoming May presidential election.
Of course, these leagues’ ongoing activity is a public health discussion in and of itself. For Taiwan, which has already fought off the virus and is keen on preventing a second surge, the beginning of play might make more sense than that in other countries, whose active leagues may represent a quixotic, impractical desire to cling to normalcy. But public health wisdom aside, the remaining matches represent a breath of fresh air for soccer fans around the world.
The circumstances also put the leagues, typically ignored by non-native fans due to perceived inferior quality of play, in the spotlight. Fans who would otherwise turn into an English Premier League match may find themselves drawn to the pitch in Belarus. Going forward, it will be interesting to see if any of the leagues continuing play garner popularity even after the more prominent divisions return. Will an EPL fan continue tuning in to support a surrogate Belarus team, or simply forget about the previously obscure league once a sense of normalcy returns? Additionally, the relative lack of competition presents some tempting business opportunities to leagues formerly mired in obscurity. We’ve seen Belarus leverage this in negotiations to be aired in other countries, but might other leagues follow suit and try to carve out a niche in an oddly open fan market? Only time will tell.
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveprice/2020/04/12/from-belarus-to-taiwan-fans-go-to-extreme-lengths-for-soccer-fix/#24905b3415ba
https://apnews.com/3f20af7942fee1bdcbd775824ebb3251
https://www.espn.com/soccer/tajikistan/story/4082264/coronavirus-free-tajikistan-to-begin-football-season
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-soccer-burundi/soccer-election-not-coronavirus-kos-football-in-burundi-idUSL5N2C22OY
I think that the shift in global focus to the few leagues that remain is perhaps representative of the ways that fans consume football, and indeed all sports, across the world. In the modern age of television and streaming sites, a near-constant flow of information has created an insatiable appetite for content. Fans want to see the action immediately, and later on there is still a constant demand for highlights and analysis, provided on a 24/7 loop. This gross saturation of sport has been, up to this point, sustainable- easy to find and digest, the rise of ‘couch punditry’ has been truly remarkable.
Until now. With the rug swept from underneath the noses of fans seemingly overnight, there is now a football-shaped hole in many viewers’ hearts that has little replacement. Transfer news is alright to satiate the Premier League itch, but fans still need something to watch. It’s little wonder that they have gravitated towards the Belarusian leagues- though perhaps watched ironically at first, it is now the only solution to the painful withdrawals from the game. (I took the quiz and my new favorite team is FC Slavia-Mozyr. Fear not Nick Hornby, I’ve found my Cambridge United.) It makes me think about how little access previous generations had to football. How did our predecessors survive, with such little information as they went about their daily lives? Without constant updates and an army of Twitter announcers projecting their opinions on the game before the players could even make it to the locker room? Alas, I was born on the wrong side of the millennium when it comes to answering these, but I’m slowly learning the answers to a different set of questions- How do you survive when your favorite teams are forced off of the fields, now only able to represent their abilities in FIFA20? How do you reconcile that you still have the screens that bring you the gratifying information, but they can now only show you transfer speculation? Sure, I can watch old footage, but that lacks the element of suspense that comes with live matches. All of a sudden, I understand the appeal of FC Slavia-Mozyr…
As this generation of spectators and players face a roadblock, these questions and more have become the result of the world being put through a nearly unprecedented experience that will fundamentally change it for years to come. While it certainly is the best choice to cancel sporting events in the name of the greater good, it surely makes me wish that I caught that last Chelsea game live.