Sports, Arts & Music

The pandemic is having a drastic effect on all aspects of our lives. This includes our relationship with sport and how we deal with COVID-19 restrictions in physical exercise. As there are fewer professional sporting events on TV, are we moving away from being ‘couch potatoes’ and developing a more active role in sport?

First and foremost, the dramatic circumstances we live in, couldn’t come with worse effects to the sporting life than the global effects we are experiencing now. With restrictions set in place as well as sporting centres shutting down, less people are approaching sport in the same way. Some people practice sport at home whilst others are using this time as a ‘gap year’ in their sporting career. Nevertheless, whichever is the case, the restrictions are having big effects on sportsmen. For example Olympic Games have been cancelled. This has had a massive effect because it contributes towards the ‘life’ of a country. A stop in tourism and athletes stoping their four year training programs have been many of the notable effects as a result of the closure of Olympic Games.

Furthermore, other events such as “The Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana has become the latest in the ever increasing list of February races to be postponed due to COVID-19” (stated by CycleNews). Consequently, less people are practicing sport resulting in less spectators going to watch these professional sporting events taking place. Therefore, many local and global businesses are being affected. On the one hand, clubs and official club stores are receiving less revenue from fans whilst at the same time; bars, restaurants or even casinos who make money from sport, are reducing their customer base because there is less people going to watch sport.

However, the pandemic may have emphasised the importance of sport for our well-being. COVID-19 has changed passive observers to actually having a direct relationship with sport. This is because during lockdown, society has had the chance to understand how vital sport is for our mental and physical health. This could explain the massive shift from individual to team sports. This new way of looking at sport has even motivated people to share some of their exercise routines for people, resulting in even some celebrities becoming better known for their sporting life. As was the case of an english body coach, Joe Wicks, who benefitted during lockdown, making live videos in Youtube for children to keep fit during the COVID-19 pandemic and ended receiving a Guinness World Record for achieving 955,185 viewers.

To sum up, during the pandemic, people have become more aware of the benefits of sport on mental health . This may also have some long term effects in combating the high obesity levels we are experiencing nowadays.