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'Terrifying': Cleveland Browns, Columbus Crew owner Dee Haslam on NFL, MLS pandemic seasons

Three years ago, the Major League Soccer team in Columbus, Ohio, looked likely to relocate to Austin, Texas, and fans were up in arms. Now the Columbus Crew are the 2020 MLS champions.

At the end of 2018, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, the owners of the Cleveland Browns, bought the Crew and vowed to keep the team in Columbus. On Dec. 12, the team beat the Seattle Sounders to win the MLS Cup, following a controversial season played amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

MLS shut down its 25th season back on March 12, when each team had only played two games. It returned to play in July for a 26-day “MLS Is Back” bubble tournament at Disney World that went off without a hitch. Then the league continued its season in home markets, sans bubble, which was met with some criticism.

Meanwhile, the NFL continues to play its 2020 season with teams in their home stadiums, and many teams are allowing some number of fans in the stands. The league has had to reschedule a number of games due to players testing positive for the virus, but only three weeks remain in its regular season.

‘It’s been terrifying every morning’

Navigating these seasons amid the pandemic has been “tremendously challenging for everybody,” Dee Haslam told Yahoo Finance Live on Friday. “It’s a day-to-day thing. We wake up every morning, the results come in about 5:30 in the morning every day, and the first thing we do is look at our phone to see who’s tested positive and where our organizations are. It’s been terrifying every morning to wake up to wonder how we’re doing. We’ve practiced everything you can imagine to be as safe as possible, but people have lives, they do go home, and they do go to the store, and there are myriad ways you could be exposed.”

Minnesota United coach Adrian Heath described the exact same morning scenario to ESPN.

This has been the tenor of 2020 for pro sports leagues: rapid testing every single day, anxiety over the results, and scheduling adjustments in order to continue play—despite rising case counts and some criticism for playing at all.

Dec 12, 2020; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Columbus Crew defender Jonathan Mensah (4) hoists the MLS Cup championship trophy after defeating the Seattle Sounders in the 2020 MLS Cup Final at MAPFRE Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 12, 2020; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Columbus Crew defender Jonathan Mensah (4) hoists the MLS Cup championship trophy after defeating the Seattle Sounders in the 2020 MLS Cup Final at MAPFRE Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

‘We believe MLS has a tremendous future’

Now COVID-19 vaccines are on the way, but it’s still unclear what 2021 sports seasons will look like.

Major League Soccer lost $1 billion in revenue from the pandemic, the NBA lost $1.5 billion, and MLB lost more than $3 billion. MLS and MLB, which are particularly reliant on ticket sale revenue (NFL gets the bulk of its revenue from TV rights), need to be able to have fans in the stands to avoid a second straight season of big losses.

The pandemic forced MLS to cut 20% of its staff last month and to push the launches of new expansion teams in Charlotte, Sacramento, and St. Louis. David Tepper, the Appaloosa Management hedge fund founder and owner of the Carolina Panthers, agreed to buy the Charlotte MLS team last year for a $325 million expansion fee.

Onlookers raise their eyebrows at the high expansion team fees MLS commands, considering that the majority of MLS franchises are not profitable yet. MLS is growing quickly, but for now, owning a team is still a money-losing proposition for most of the owners.

Dee Haslam sees it as a bet on the future of the sport.

“For us, it was so much about the community, and Ohio,” she says. “The team was going to leave, and we knew what that is like for a fanbase to lose a team. It is incredibly hard to get these franchises, so you don’t want your city to lose that momentum. We truly believe soccer is a tremendous sport, has a tremendous future. Obviously, the people that have invested in the sport believe the same. It’s exciting, it’s fun, the demographic is extremely young, so we could not be more delighted to be part of an investor group that believes so strongly that the sport has a great future.”

Daniel Roberts is an editor-at-large at Yahoo Finance and specializes in sports business. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.

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