How Pandemic Changed the Way We Watch Sports?

It’s a tough time to be a sports fan, the Coronavirus has given humanity plenty of reasons to worry about over the past year and it’s even managed to take one of our favorite distractions away from us, Live Sports. It’s been over a year since we’ve watched live sports and unfortunately, it seems like it’s going to be that way for a while.

If you’re like me and you don’t know what to do with yourself, don’t hit the panic button just quite yet there are numerous creative ways technology is giving sports fanatics their fix despite the fact that practically all major sports have now been canceled.

We don’t have a way to consume every sport but we do have some new options for the major ones, the NBA season was postponed indefinitely on March 11th after the outbreak hit the league directly with Utah Jazz Center Rudy Gobert and Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell testing positive for the coronavirus. To keep fans entertained through teams across the league have been playing out their season through NBA 2k and streaming the simulations on Twitch also on a positive note when it comes to the NBA many people around the league are pitching in to help the hourly employees who were affected by the suspension of the season. 

The NBA had also announced that it made its NBA League Pass available for free back from April 22nd with this you can watch every game from this season and classic games throughout the years now when it comes to the NCAA tournament you may be out of luck on feeling the madness unless you plan on buying an old copy of NCAA basketball 2009.

In fact, you can even watch Kayo Sports outside Australia, even if you don’t live in Australia. All you need is a VPN service like ExpressVPN. You can also watch some great basketball movies on any of the popular streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. I recommend blue chips on Amazon Prime video or semi-pro and Space Jam on Netflix. Good news for all you combat sports fans out there MMA is still alive and kicking and yes that pun was thoroughly intended!

UFC Brazilian took place on March 14th behind closed doors and without fans UFC Fight Night 171 has been moved from London because of travel restrictions enacted by the US. Dana White has also announced that UFC events will continue to go on until government shutdowns are in place for now you can still watch people go at it in the Octagon on ESPN Plus.

If just watching it isn’t enough for you and you want to be a part of the action you can get a copy of UFC 3 and yes we do know that’s an older video game but we haven’t heard any more news on the long-awaited UFC 4 soccer.

It has taken a big hit due to the coronavirus and many leagues have shut downplay, but not all of them Liga Mexico is still having matches without fans and attendance, you can stream them on a number of platforms like ESPN, Deportes, and CBS sports.com.

The football clubs that aren’t playing in real life are still offering fans hope to see their favorite players on the pitch. Leeds United wasn’t able to play their championship game against Cardiff so they stream the simulation on FIFA 20, the broadcasts drew in 50,000 online viewers showing that people still want to see their favorite teams play no matter how!

The NHL season announced on March 12th that it was pausing the 2019-2020 season but similar to soccer, people are running out simulations of the entire season on NHL 20 to show that they still give a *uck, and if that doesn’t do it for you.

You can still turn to Netflix and watch some really great hockey movies like Miracle Goon and more Football wasn’t as affected by the coronavirus as other sports since this isn’t the season for it but the XFL an alternative to the NFL did have to suspend its season on March 12th, so in other words, you probably won’t be able to watch any actual live football games for a while.

However, if you still need to feel the grit of the gridiron there are plenty of football movies as well on streaming services. The NFL made its NFL game pass available for free during the coronavirus pandemic. This includes every game from the past 11 seasons hard knocks and a football life and you can always build a dynasty on Madden.

Although many in-person events have been canceled due to coronavirus e-sports are actually saving the day for many sports enthusiasts professional athletes like Dale Earnhardt Jr. have been drawing hundreds of thousands to watch them play video games of their respective sport pro athletes are spending their time off playing video games so in at least some way we can still watch them play.

Young NBA star Luka Don cheek for the Dallas Mavericks is playing a lot of video games while his season is on hiatus and he even reached out on social media to try to figure out how to set up his own twitch stream Josh Hart of the New Orleans Pelicans who has been an avid gamer for years and really a leading figure in meshing professional basketball and professional gaming.

He joked online, that now no one can make fun of him for being a video game nerd, the surge of professional athletes playing video games is not only good entertainment but we could see it sparking organize tournaments pro Am’s and even charity streams for this coronavirus pandemic US fans will have to get creative during this coronavirus pandemic.  

Hopefully by the time NFL and college football is back on we can pack the stadiums again to watch our favorite teams, but for now, E-sports is on the rise!  if you have any other ways to get your sports fix let us know!