President Donald Trump Wants Sports Venues Open By August or September

As we reported earlier today, President Donald Trump spoke with the heads of major sports leagues, including Vince McMahon for WWE. ESPN reports that the conference call was about when sports will be able to start up again, especially with everything shut down thanks to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.

The President said that he thinks the NFL season should start in September as it always does, and added that he wants fans back in stadiums by August or September. It’s unknown at this time if medical experts believe that this will be possible, given the projections previously delivered.

Trump said: “They want to get back. They’ve got to get back. … We want to get back soon, very soon. We have to open our country again. No — I can’t tell you a date, but I think it’s going to be sooner rather than later.”

He acknowledged the “good work being done by many teams and players” who are helping their communities and fans in the middle of the crisis.

California Governor Gavin Newsom stated that he’s not sure there will be any live sports by that time period. He added: “I’m not anticipating that happening in this state. It’s interesting, I have a lot of friends that work in Major League Baseball and in the NFL, they’ve been asking me — in fact, a well-known athlete just asked me — a football player — if he expects to come back; I said, ‘I would move very cautiously in that expectation.’ So look, I’m not here to second-guess anybody, but I am here to say this, our decision on that basis, at least here in the state of California, will be determined by the facts, will be determined by the health experts, will be determined by our capacity to meet this moment, bend the curve and have the appropriate community surveillance and testing to confidently determine whether that’s appropriate. And right now I’m just focused on the immediate, but that’s not something I anticipate happening in the next few months.”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver, whose league was the first to suspend play on March 11, said that the NBA would love to start the economy once it’s okay to do so. Trump, meanwhile, suggested the leagues could work together to lobby for tax incentives used for entertainment expenses, which would included removing concessions and tickets from taxes.

As noted, the league included commissioners and top executives for WWE, the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL, Major League Soccer, WNBA, the PGA Tour, LPGA, UFC, NASCAR, IndyCar and Breeders’ Cup.