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Check, mates

Of the very, very few sporting events to take place anywhere in the last week, perhaps the most consequential is the ongoing FIDE Candidates Tournament. Eight chess grandmasters are facing off in Yekaterinburg, Russia for the right to play world champion Magnus Carlsen later this year.

FIDE and its promotional partner World Chess have been at pains to insist that it is doing all it can to ensure the safety of its players, with coronavirus tests, twice-daily health checks and abundant quantities of hand sanitiser. Curiously, in a sport that can so easily be played remotely, the competitors are sitting across the board inpersonbut some creative measures have been taken to encourage social distancing.

The most remarkable of these involved commissioning a collection of five-inch-tall Ken and Barbie-like models in each players image to be arranged for handshakes and other currently impossible protocols in official photographs. But as the Wall Street Journal has noted, there is one specific safety measure the proponents have not quite managed under intense concentration.

Of coursewe touch our faces, said world number sixMaximeVachier-Lagraveof France.That much is clear.

The sports industry is adapting to a period with pretty much no live sport. Staying a relevant, consistent, or even an uplifting part of peoples everyday lives through the social distancing and isolation needed to stave off the coronavirus pandemic is taking some creative thinking already.

For the most part, this has meant turning to two types of content: the archives, and shared digital events. Formula One andNascarhave launched enthusiastically into esports series involving current and former drivers as well as celebrities, with Formula Two driverGuanyuZhou winning the Bahrain Virtual Grand Prix on Sunday and theeNascariRacingPro Invitational Series has secured a linear TV deal with Fox Sports. Meanwhile organisations like world soccersFifahave opened up all manner of historic coverage for those who prefer their sport to be from the real world, albeit also from the past.

At this point, as can only be expected, these initiatives are fairly close to the minimum viable product phase and a high degree of improvisation. Still, there are a couple of questions that it will be worth asking as they continue.

First of all, who are they for and who will actually end up enjoying this content? Will esports output, for example, appeal to existing sports audiences hungry for something to follow, or existing esports communities hungry for something new? Do retro matches fill the gap for everyone, or just a specific niche? What can this tell us about the value of these types of offerings in the long term?

Secondly, what are rights holders aiming to accomplish? Retaining a measure of visibility and viability will be essential, to be sure, and there isa need to preserve a commercial link just as there is for thosepay-TVbroadcasters without live events to keepviewersonside withsubscription freezes. Yetasgovernment responses in country after country makeitlikelythat playing sport will take longer to return as a leisure activity than watching it on television, it will be just as important to thinkhard onhow toprotect some of those deeper connections, too.

Another event standing out across a barren sporting landscape is Major League Fishing in the US. 500,000 unique visitors watched a combined 19 million minutes of competition on the leagues in-house live stream,MLFNOW!,during the third round of the Bass Pro Tour in Lake Fork, Texasfrom 13thto 18thMarch, whenever that was.

Viewing numbers were up 20 per cent on events in February, which were themselves up 89 per cent on similar events year-on-year, while stage three also saw a 72 per cent rise insocial media impressions on the earlier contests.MLF says its sport is tailor-made for social distancing and took additional stepsto meet changing public health guidelines last week, including cancelling joint weigh-ins of each catch and altering accommodation arrangements. Round four of the Bass Pro Tour, ifyouneed things to put in your diary, runs from 3rdto 8thApril.

At a time when the current hiatus threatens financial insecurity for almost everyone, freelancers will be feeling that uncertainty more than most.

Credit is due, then, to the Professional Triathletes Organisation, which has instituted a series of radical measures to protect those men and women ranked 21 to 100 in its global rankings. Its Year-End Annual Bonus Programme will pay out immediately based on the current standings, rather than later in the season. The overall pot has grown from US$2 million to US$2.5 million, with the extra US$500,000 spread between those in those lower ranking brackets based on their position as of 1stJanuary or 15thMarch, whichever is higher.

Meanwhile, thetop ten triathletes in each list have committed to spending some of their downtime during the suspension of races making commercial appearances online to bring in additional funds for their fellow competitors.

On the subject of emergency pay responses, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is to forego his salary indefinitely in the wake of golfs flurry of cancellations and postponements, according to ESPN and Golfweek. Monahans gesturecomeswith a number of Tour executivestaking pay cuts of 25 per cent and all other staff facing salary freezes to 2019 levels.

Probably the closest any sports story has come to pulling attention away from any coronavirus-related updates was the news that Tom Bradys marathon, multiple Super Bowl-winning stint at the New England Patriots is at an end.

The Californian, who will be 43 by the time the new NFL season is scheduled to begin, has gone south to Florida and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and has made an immediate impact on the merchandising market. Fanatics has revealed that the top three bestselling jerseys across NFLShop.com and the Buccaneers online store have been mens and womens Tom Brady jerseys, with his day-over-day jersey sales rising 900 per cent.

The Bucs, unsurprisingly, are the strongest-performing team in the league in merchandise sales, selling twice as much inventory on Friday as the rest of the Fanatics network had in the previous two weeks. In Europe, ten times as many Brady jerseys were sold on Fridayas those for any other player.

Read more:
The Tip-Off | Chess players proving they are and aren't model citizens in a health crisis - SportsPro Media