Prof. Norman O’Reilly, the director of International Institute for Sport Business and Leadership at U of G, spoke to CTV News Channel about how professional and amateur sports leagues have fared during the pandemic.

O’Reilly said that for the bigger leagues, such as the NBA and NHL, the idea of moving games into empty arenas with no spectators is looking more and more like a real possibility.

“So much of their revenues come from media and they’re willing to take the hit in ticket sales just to get their product before a captive audience,” he said.

The story is much different for smaller and amateur leagues.

“This part of sport has been literally devastated. The majority of their revenues come from ticket sales. So it’s a much more difficult decision for them to find ways to survive and come back,” he said, adding that even many CFL teams are in jeopardy.

A professor in the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management in U of G’s Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics, O’Reilly is a leading scholar in the business of sport. He studies marketing, sponsorship, sport finance, social marketing and tourism management.

He is available for interviews.

Contact:

Prof. Norm O’Reilly
noreilly@uoguelph.ca