NEW YORK, United States (AFP) —The $100-billion US sports landscape will lose US $12 billion in revenue due to the coronavirus shutdown, ESPN reported yesterday, with deeper cuts if NFL and college gridiron games are wiped out.

Analysis of the magnitude of business losses includes superstar salaries to pay for stadium workers but it might be a conservative estimate because it does not include outdoor recreational sport, gambling, or such individual sports as golf, tennis and NASCAR — the most popular form of US auto racing.

Patrick Rishe, sports business programme director at Washington University in St Louis, estimated the impact of the shutdown on major US pro and college sports leagues as well as youth sport for ESPN, which also had labour market analysis firm Emsi make sport-related job estimates.

Rishe estimated US pro sports would lose US $5.5 billion from the shutdown while college sports would lose $3.9 billion and youth sport tourism would fall by US $2.4 billion.

And those figures assume Major League Baseball (MLB) and Major League Soccer can finish half of their scheduled seasons with spectators while the NBA and the National Hockey League cancel the unfinished part of their regular seasons and stage play-off games without spectators, with youth sports resuming in July.

None of that is assured given the stay-at-home orders remaining in place over most of the nation as a result of the deadly virus that has killed more than 63,000 people in the United States and infected more than one million.

“As an economist, you stand back, you look at the carnage that’s taking place — dumbfounded, awestruck, mind-numbing. All of those phrases, they’re all relevant because we just have never seen anything on this scale,” Rishe told ESPN.

Figures include US $3.25 billion that would have been spent by spectators on pro sports plus US $371 million of income for stadium and arena workers and US $2.2 billion in US television rights fees.

An NFL wipe out would cost more than US $11.5 billion in television revenue while 65 major collegiate American football programmes receive about US $4 billion in TV money, about half the income that finances all athletic department budgets.

There are three million jobs nationwide that depend upon sports, from ushers and guards to scouts and trainers, according to the report.

Rishe said that should MLB play without spectators for half a season for its 162-games-a-team schedule, over US $2 billion more in game-day fan spending would be lost.