Coronavirus and Sports

How has sports been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic? Neil deGrasse Tyson explores this and more with co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice, economist and author Tobias Moskowitz, PhD, and neuroscientist Heather Berlin, PhD.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, Sports Edition, Sports in the Corona-verse. And I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as I usually am, always am, and I got with me my co-host, Gary O'Reilly. Gary?

• 0:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Gary is a Brit, which his accent will reveal, and a former professional soccer player. Gary, are you, do I have to say former? Like, once you're president, they always call you president?

• 0:46Gary O'Reilly?

  No, it's former. Otherwise, people are looking at me going, "He's not playing. Look at here. This is a former, while he's sat there. He's a player."

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, how are you?

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  By the way, Gary is not British. Gary is from central New Jersey, so don't let him fool you. Don't let him fool you.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's not from Staten Island?

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  That would be even better.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what we're talking about today orbits, in this segment, orbits the expertise of our special guest, Tobias, I think we call you Toby, and I want to get the pronunciation of your last name, Moskowitz? Moskowitz, perfect. Moskowitz, Toby Moskowitz. And I got a little mini bio on you here. Professor of Economics and Finance at Yale University.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so you're slumming it, huh Toby?

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a partner in AQR Capital Management, which stands for what? Applied Quantitative Research. Very exciting title. I know, right? That's, that's, okay. No wonder you abbreviated it.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're co-author of the book Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won. Ooh, interesting. Wait, does Yale know that you're just doing sports as a professor of economics?

• 2:20Speaker 03

  You know, as you know, once you get tenure, you can do whatever the hell you want. That's the beauty of it, so.

• 2:27Chuck Nice?

  You're like a Supreme Court judge. It's great. Pretty awesome.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  For life, that's right.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  He's just like, I'm in for life.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me ask, you have this sort of specialty, economics and sports. What percent of sports revenue traditionally comes from tickets at a stadium versus TV versus sponsor, you know, how does that pie divide up? And how's that being affected now in the coronavirus?

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Well, in fact, if you break down most sports teams' revenue into, like you said, TV broadcasting, advertising, as well as game day, which is not just ticket sales, but also concessions, parking, everything else, most of it's coming from TV and advertising. It varies by sport. Football, basketball, mostly TV and advertising. Hockey, a little less so, a lot of gate revenue. But, you know, the coronavirus has crippled that. The revenue has gone way, way down.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So another problem is, there's certain TV shows that thrive in reruns, right? In fact, Star Trek was dead and buried and was resurrected only in the secondary marketplace where people embrace reruns for a next generation. Rerun sports games don't.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  At least they haven't in the past, right? Now that we have, that's the only option. What you're seeing is live classic game, well, look, the most watched series on TV is, you know, The Last Dance with the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. People are desperate for any sort of sports content. It'd be interesting to see what happens when we're finally back to live games, how that changes. People are going to still prefer live games, but there still might be a market for some of these old, old sports games, too.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're telling me ESPN knew the virus was coming?

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they got this series ready for it.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  No, if they knew that there are a lot of better things you could do, like, you know, trade in the stock market, but.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  Isn't it funny though, it's, it's, it is coincidental, but Michael Jordan actually was afraid that LeBron James was eclipsing him as a figure with younger people. And he really was like, okay, so go ahead and put it out, but because he resisted for some reason. Is that, is that correct?

• 4:51Speaker 03

  I've heard that story as well.

• 4:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  And it, and it is true. I mean, you know, my, my 17 year old and my 14 year old, I always talk about Jordan because I was a Bulls fan and they think, yeah, yeah, yeah, how great was he? They're now watching old games and saying, that guy's, that guy's really good. So they're getting an appreciation for it, which I think is nice.

• 5:11Chuck Nice?

  What a great conversation. Hey dad, have you heard of this guy, Michael Jordan? He's awesome.

• 5:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Funny, but the whole, the whole of media has basically spun 180 because they have nothing to look forward to. They have to look backwards. Every, the present's on pause, everything's behind them. I mean, I, I've had games rerun on TV back in the UK. I did a, a big interview with The Athletic just this weekend in the middle of May. The Guardian newspaper in the UK, The Independent, everybody wants to come and knock on your door if you've got some historic point of reference. And I think that's going to be interesting whether we still retain that lens to be behind us and how quickly and how permanently it goes and sets itself to the forward aspect.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Toby, how much of, how much has sports lost in the last three months?

• 6:06Speaker 03

  So in the last three months, it's been, it's approaching now close to $4 billion. The estimate is it will be closer to 12 billion if you encompass all of sports. And that's assuming that the NFL and college football actually have a full season. If that doesn't happen, you're going to double those figures. They're going to be in the 20, 24 billion range.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  Now, do those figures include the ancillary income from concessions, from businesses surrounding? Now, we've seen a new phenomenon in recent years where municipalities create parks surrounding their sports arenas so that people have a reason to go to that area when there's not a game. But now those areas are suffering like crazy because there are no games. Do they take that into account as well?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  So that's a great question. Those numbers that I just quoted, you do not. They're conservative. They take the following into account. They take into account the concessions, the parking, all that, all the staff that needs to be supported at the stadium. They don't take into account the lost hotel revenue, as you point out, near the stadiums.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  The economic impact.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it's going to be much, much bigger than that.

• 7:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  And, and, you know, that's, that's, that's going to be a real hit. So I don't, I don't know what that brings the number to. It's not going to double it, but you know, add a few billion to that number for sure.

• 7:33Gary O'Reilly?

  But Toby, if you look at me being the owner of a large sporting franchise, I've probably got several players who are draining 100 million, 200, 300 million dollar contracts out of my bank account. I've got no incoming revenue from TV. I've got no concessions. I've got no ancillary, as Chuck was saying. I mean, we're seeing stadiums now have become entertainment palaces. Where's my real conflict? The fact I've got no TV income coming in and I've got massive outgoing with wages. How do I, as an owner, solve this problem?

• 8:09Speaker 03

  So no, it's a very difficult question. First of all, the TV revenue is coming in because these are long-term contracts, but there's an issue, which is if the games get canceled. Then you didn't meet your obligation of that contract. You're gonna have to give some of that money back. That's gonna be a negotiation that's gonna have to happen for some of these leagues, I'm guessing fairly soon. And it'll be interesting to see what happens. My guess is what you're gonna end up doing is the owners are gonna take a big loss, some of the TV companies are gonna take a big loss, and either enter longer term contracts or defer some of those payments and compensation to later. Same on the player's side, your point about hundred million dollar contracts. If the games are canceled, some of the leagues

• 8:50Speaker 03

  have what they call a force majeure clause, which is unexpected things happen, and games get canceled, you don't have to pay the players. That's true in baseball. In basketball-

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not just unexpected, it's unexpected things that you can't control.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  That you can't control, thank you, yes, that's correct. That's right. An act of God is the way it's typically legally written. But some leagues don't have that. NHL, for instance, doesn't have that. So I don't know what's gonna happen there.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, they're atheists, let's be honest.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So try and hug the jokes, Chuck. Just try and hug them.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much revenue can be brought back into the equation if the teams perform in empty stadiums?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  So that's a great question. And no one really knows the answer to that question, because we don't really know what the demand will be. I think, you know, let's say realistically, if you brought back, if you were able to capture all the TV revenue, that's a huge chunk. In the NFL, that would be 75%. In basketball, it would be 60%. It'd be huge. Are you gonna capture all of that? Almost certainly not, right? It's not gonna be the same. But let's say you got half of that back. That would get you a good chunk of the way there, right? 35, 40% of the way there to those revenues. So I think they're hoping for something like that. The other thing that they're gonna hope to do, to go back to Gary's question, is renegotiate some of these big contracts, and not necessarily not pay the players, because that's another issue, but maybe defer that compensation,

• 10:14Speaker 03

  or maybe they make the players whole, or even better than whole, down the road if things get back to normal. I think you're gonna have to come up with creative solutions.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  So do you think that, from a public relations standpoint, that the teams would benefit by- I don't know, shaming some of the bigger players that have these multimillion dollar contracts because everybody, I mean, it's very hard to be a billionaire and cry broke. It's very, very difficult, but it's really not about the owners, it's about the organization because you're talking about a thousand people, you know, in an organization when you, when you put everybody into the mix, all those people have to be kind of paid too.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  No, that's right. And in fact, just to give you an example, a typical NBA game requires about nineteen hundred people to staff that game, right? Most of those people are not under contract. They live, you know, paycheck to paycheck and, you know, they're, they're really in trouble at this point. Then on top of that, you have, what no one's really talking about is think about all the minor leagues, right? Take baseball for instance, right? We think about the Major League Baseball players not getting their money or the people working in those stadiums. You've got the triple A, single A, double A leagues. Those players don't get paid anything and they've got to be paid by the same organization, which is losing money. So there's so many more people that are affected by this much bigger way. And I think your, your point is absolutely correct. It's going to be hard for people,

• 11:42Speaker 03

  billionaires to cry, we need to save this money when you're going to have, you know, thousands and thousands of people in these leagues out of work and, you know, worrying about where, when they're going to put the next meal on the table.

• 11:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Toby, I mean, the reason you're a billionaire, not, maybe you are, I'm not, but, okay, we can establish that. Billionaires tend to be billionaires because they're good with their money. Now, if I'm looking at hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars, I'm just going to cut my ties. And is this now going to be a landscape where we see franchises on buyer sales or just go out of existence altogether in the new landscape?

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Well, it'll be interesting. A lot of it depends on how long this lasts, right? You know, if this lasts over several years, that, that's a big bill to pay. If we can get back to work in less than a year, a very different story. I think first of all, most owners own sports teams not because they expect to make a lot of money on the sports teams, but because they love owning sports teams. They still want to make money, don't get me wrong. And you're right, to get to that position, they've been good at making money. But I also think they're thinking about the, I think you need to think about the long term. If you're myopic, you may cut, you know, your losses and move on. I think if you're thinking about this long term, like a guy like Mark Cuban who said, "Look, I'm gonna pay all my vendors. I'm gonna pay the people that, that help staff the stadium and the people that work around the stadium. Their livelihood depends

• 13:05Speaker 03

  on this, because we're in this for the long term and I want them back as soon as we're back." So I think you can, you can have this long-term view where you're gonna expect to make money in the long term and absorb this short-term hit. And a lot of us are going through this. It's not just the sports world.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Toby, what you're saying is that viruses are temporary, but sports is forever.

• 13:24Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  One hopes.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. You know, the other thing too, though, when you think about it, the biggest valuation of, I'm sorry, the biggest value in a sports franchise is not your year-over-year profit. It's the, it's the appreciation of the team as a whole. So, I mean, let's be honest, you, if, if you take a couple of years as a hit, I mean, look at the Dallas Cowboys, when Jerry Jones bought it for, like, what was it? A 200 million or whatever. People were like, "Oh my God, that's crazy!" And now it's worth like 2 billion or whatever, I don't know. So that, I mean, that's what these guys are really in it for. It's like,

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  when I get out, that's when I get paid as the billionaire. When I say goodbye, that's, you know, that's what I'm, that's what, or when I create, sell off little pieces of the team, you know, to these little hedge fund groups. I make, I mean, you make so much money.

• 14:24Gary O'Reilly?

  See Toby, I, as an economist, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always seen that the most valuable asset of any sporting franchise is not, is not the playing staff.

• 14:36Gary O'Reilly?

  It's the fans, the people who will shell out their money, day in, day out, buy the tickets, buy the merch, buy the cable package, everything that goes with it. I mean, if, if there's not a way to keep those in as part of the family, this fabric will just unravel.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Well, I agree, and I, and I think that's why the owners are going to be very cautious here, right? In terms of what they do. The, the optics are very important. My favorite example of this, Gary, is, is my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs. I was a lifelong fan, growing up in the, in the seventies and eighties. They were terrible, right? It was one of the worst teams, yet consistently one of the top three most valued franchises. Why? It was a great experience there, and it was the love of just being a Cubs fan and watching them underperform year after year. It eventually got good, but that fan base was, was always there. And I think right now, owners recog- certainly the leagues recognize this, right? It's a huge part of the value of these franchises in the leagues, and they want to be careful. You don't want to come off saying, you know, that the billionaires

• 15:36Speaker 03

  are worried about losing a few hundred million. You want to make sure you take care of everybody, because that's, that's ultimately where the value is. I think that's right.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just, and just to be clear, the White Sox perform in the same city as the Chicago Cubs, and did not have the beloved legacy that the Chicago Cubs did.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Yes, my favorite statistic on this that we wrote about in our book, Scorecasting, was the year after the White Sox won the World Series, they still had less attendance than the Cubs, who finished last, that year. Same size stadium.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to start to wrap up this segment. I have a, I have a more subtle question for you, just regarding performance, because in your book, you analyze non-obvious forces that operate on sports outcome. I wonder, if you ever have a team playing in an empty stadium... What does that do to the home team advantage?

• 16:30Speaker 03

  So this, I, there's a question that I've spent a great deal of time on and done some research. So we looked at this in our book and looked at all the usual, you know, scenarios for why people think there is a, first of all, there is a home field advantage. It exists in every sport. It's different across sports. Our main finding was the biggest factor was the influence on the referees. And before I get into, you know, all the details of this, and I know we don't have a ton of time, it's a subconscious choice on the referees, which is, I don't think the referees are biased towards the home team. They want to be impartial. They want to do the right thing. But their perception gets influenced by 50,000 or 20,000 screaming fans. And what we find in the data.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and the.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and the fact that you gotta get through the parking lot to get to your car.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  I actually think, I actually think that's a minor part of it. I, I, I actually believe what happens, and we see this in the data, is when there's a close call and the referee is legitimately unsure of whether it should go one way or the other, they're influenced by the fact that 20,000 fans are quite sure which way it should go.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  I see this in psychology all the time. So that's what we find is the biggest factor. Other things that people talk about, travel, fatigue and, and, you know, players playing better in front of the crowd, they do, but so does your opponent, by the way. Uh, being booed is almost as fun as being cheered.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Absolutely.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  For a lot of these athletes. So that doesn't seem to be a big factor. It's not the only factor, but it's the, it's the biggest factor that we found. So we'll see what happens with all these games potentially playing in front of no fans. Although that did happen once before in Italy in 2007. This was in soccer. Gary probably knows this. Uh, 21 matches in the Italian Serie A were played without fans. The home field advantage dropped by 80%. So, uh, we'll see if that actually happens this time around.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, have real, good data.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Nice data, yeah, nice experiment, yeah.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we gotta take a quick break and Toby, you know, normally we like. Release you at this point, but there's so many questions we still have for you. We have to bring on another guest. Can you come back in our third segment and we can pick this up?

• 18:38Speaker 03

  I'd be happy to.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's do that. All right. Right now, we'll take our first break from StarTalk Sports Edition. Coming up in the next segment, we're going to explore the psychological state of athletes in the Corona-verse when we return.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition in the Corona-verse. This time, we're focusing on athletes' mental health. And we have to bring in, you know, a mental health professional in this regard, because Chuck and Gary are not helpful in that regard. Well, we're helpful if you want to know what crazy looks like. So Heather Berlin, you're a friend of StarTalk. Thanks for coming on for this. You are a neuroscientist and a mental health professional with a practice. And you're based at Mount Sinai Medical Center in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. So, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Gary and Chuck have got questions for you.

• 20:05Gary O'Reilly?

  We do. Hi, Heather. Let's jump straight in here. You take away a hyper-motivated, driven athlete, and you take away their reason to be, i.e. through this quarantine. How on earth is that going to affect their mental well-being?

• 20:24Heather Berlin?

  Right. I mean, in many ways, it's the same as all of us, right? We're taken out of our, our jobs, the things that motivate us on a daily basis. But I think for athletes in particular, because they are so used to regimen and routine and, you know, practice, and especially if it's a competitive sport, you know, working with their teammates. So that's suddenly taken away, it can actually lead to more mental health issues, depression, you know, that feeling of isolation, the lack of motivation. Because in a way, you can kind of get addicted to that adrenaline rush, right? The cortisol that is released, you know, in the competition. And it might even lead to more aggressive behaviors at home, right? Because a lot of times with sports is a way to get out aggression.

• 21:08Heather Berlin?

  You know, a lot of like high testosterone and you can get it out in a, in a healthy way. But if you don't have that outlet, it might lead to more aggressive behavior in less productive ways.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, isn't it true that domestic violence reports have gone up during the coronavirus?

• 21:26Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if crime outside of the home has gone down?

• 21:29Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fascinating.

• 21:32Heather Berlin?

  And they're correlated. I mean, there's, you know, we call it externalizing behavior. That is like aggressive behavior. It's higher in men, but women also have aggression, both physical and verbal. But if you can't release it in the outside world, where else is there to release it? And then unfortunately, those around you become the recipients of that aggressive behavior. So it makes sense that, you know, domestic violence is up.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Heather, following up on Gary's question, there are some athletes where they have a singular point of existence this year, for example, in the Olympics. And we're recording this mid-May right now, and probably the Olympics, I don't know if they'll hold it with no audience or if it's postponed, but let's just say, I've trained four years to be in the Olympics and now it's gone. So what, where does that put me mentally?

• 22:23Heather Berlin?

  So first of all, I mean, the disappointment, something you've been working for for so many years is suddenly taken away. Maybe this was your last chance, you know, maybe you're at the upper edge of your athletic ability and, you know, four years from now, you won't be as good, right? So having to deal with those psychological issues is a major concern for athletes who I would actually recommend that they get, they have at least available mental health professionals to help them deal with that disappointment. There's no easy answer to it. I mean, it's, you know, it's a bummer that that this might happen. And not only to these people at the top, but, you know, what about like, you know, the college football team, the, the high school football team, you know, this was your chance to be on the varsity team and this was your big moment and now it's gone.

• 23:07Heather Berlin?

  A lot of people are going to be dealing with issues like that.

• 23:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's go back the other way around. If I'm going into this quarantine on a slump, is there a way that I can through talking to people like you, bring myself out of it and reemerge on a more upward mobile scale here?

• 23:28Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, some people are taking this opportunity, this kind of like we're on pause, to actually work on themselves, you know, to, to go into therapy. They have the time, they're off that kind of treadmill and to emerge perhaps in a better place mentally when they come out of it. So it does work in both directions, you know, some people are getting worse, but some people are taking the opportunity to work on themselves to, to emerge better.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  Sounds to me like the pandemic is good for your business.

• 23:59Chuck Nice?

  Just saying, this is a little self-serving, Heather.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it is a little bit, a little bit.

• 24:04Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Good times. Good times.

• 24:07Chuck Nice?

  Good times.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to say that I, I've been working on my own physique and I got my six-pack abs that just ready to be seen. They just happen to be under three inches of fat, that's all.

• 24:21Heather Berlin?

  Right, right, right.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're there.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  Right. And at the same time, I am working on a little Corona baby. That's my stomach.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does it do, Chuck?

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I've gotten pregnant with a Corona baby. That's all. My, I have gained 11 pounds.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you got a Corona belly, baby.

• 24:41Gary O'Reilly?

  I have the solution to that. Throw the scales away.

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  I like the way you think, Gary.

• 24:50Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, I know. It's a win-win situation.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 24:55Gary O'Reilly?

  So if quarantine is not enough to sort of start detonating the landmines in your head, Heather, as an athlete in, say, a contact sport, it might be basketball, it might be NFL, it might be soccer, I've got to think about, I've got to go back into an area where I have to closely mark an opponent, tackle a running back, have this proximity. How am I getting over this particular, because I've got voices in my ears, these people I'm sharing my home with telling me you can't go back, it's dangerous. How is that all going to sort itself out and become a nice tranquil ocean?

• 25:36Heather Berlin?

  So there are going to be individual differences in terms of how anxious people are to re-contact others, right? Some people, they, it's not going to be much of a problem. For others, they will have to overcome that anxiety and part of it is going to be measures in place that make them feel safe. So I imagine that before contact sports begin, they're going to have every player be tested, at least I would say twice a week to be safe, right? And, yeah, I mean, so that will be some measure that will give them a feeling of at least psychological security, but it will be an issue to have to overcome. And, you know, once that first case shows up again, which, you know, chances are it will.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  It's going to be a whole new game, whole new ballgame.

• 26:21Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and they might, and listen, I mean, when they roll out sports, maybe they're, the contact sports are going to be the last things to come back, you know, it's supposed to be tennis, and then maybe, you know, baseball where they, right, where they disinfect the bats and the balls and the clubs, you know, and then little by little, if that goes well, then, you know, maybe contact sports down the road.

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  So on that same note, Heather, let's take this a step further. So we've, we've been through this before, believe it or not, during the AIDS pandemic, AIDS was also, you know, global and it's a virus, and what?

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Happened in sports was that they took precautions if someone got cut, you know, you had to come out of the game. There were all these different things, measures that we took to protect against the transmission of HIV, okay, which was a bodily fluids transmission. Now, now, here's the difference, though. I didn't have to worry about transmitting it to my family. So it was me who put myself at risk when I went out on that field. If I got cut and I got, and I contracted this, okay, which was highly unlikely, but still

• 27:38Chuck Nice?

  precautions were me. This is, I mean, the most infectious thing we've seen in God knows how long. And the most important part is you can be asymptomatic. If I get it that day, I could come home that day and transmit it to my family. What's that do to your head while you're out on the field?

• 27:57Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  You know?

• 27:59Heather Berlin?

  Part of it, and I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if these players had to wear masks while they were playing to decrease infection rate. I don't know what that would do to the sport either, but to put in extra protective gear. I mean, we, we were, they wear helmets to protect their heads from injury. Why wouldn't they wear a mask to protect other people? Because especially when you're running and you know, you're releasing a lot more air and there's, it can spread much more easily. Masks might be a new protective equipment for certain sports. But that psychological impact, it will be significant for sure. People will be thinking about this.

• 28:34Gary O'Reilly?

  There'll be a physiological impact as well, Heather, because

• 28:37Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 28:37Gary O'Reilly?

  I've played with elite athletes who are asthmatic.

• 28:41Heather Berlin?

  Hmm.

• 28:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Right? And now you're sticking a mask over them. They're conscious enough about their breathing ability and inability. And if they're going to have an attack, they have inhalers and everything else. You add that layer on, a paranoid

• 28:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Person with an underlying ailment. Mm hmm.

• 28:59Speaker 05

  And the claustrophobia.

• 29:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Much.

• 29:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  So and what about this though, Gary? Um, if does, does wearing a mask, I know just wearing one when I go to the supermarket.

• 29:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  Makes it more difficult for me to breathe. Will that actually lower performance? Because you're not getting as much oxygen, you're breathing through something.

• 29:21Gary O'Reilly?

  There are masks and I've seen, I've seen NFL players wear them that if I'm not mistaken, and if I'm wrong, I apologize. They replicate the sort of oxygen intake you get at altitude. So what they can do is replicate altitude training at sea level.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 29:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, that's obviously enabling them to exercise with intensity, but not be too stressed. So if you can sort of retrofit that to not replicate altitude, but have a comfort to wear a mask and still be able to perform what will be intense athletic exercise. Then that's a design that someone's going to have to come up with rapidly.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, all I can think of is the HBO series Watchmen, where when they're all on duty, they, they have

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Masks.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Above their nose and they form a community of

• 30:13Gary O'Reilly?

  How prophetic.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  What, what a great show and how, by the way, by the way, you're right, prophetic. Where now everybody walks around in a mask.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 30:24Chuck Nice?

  Now we're all doing the same thing.

• 30:26Gary O'Reilly?

  It's, and you know what? If you get that Rorschach thing going on, that's going to weird me out.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  By the way, that's the one I want.

• 30:35Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the one we all want.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we only have Heather for a few more minutes. We've got more questions for her.

• 30:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, um, all right. We've, we've talked about how athletes might react in an empty stadium. How are fans going to react? I've got to get you in and out of a stadium comfortably. I've got to give you a comfort zone you're happy to exist in. In entry, exist and exit from this stadium. And, um, you know, social, how on earth Heather? Please, because I've got lots of questions, but you're the only one who's close to an answer for me.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's an interesting problem. We're spending this time thinking about the athletes, but we have addicted fans.

• 31:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That have issues.

• 31:16Heather Berlin?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yes, people need to get their sports fix, you know? Um, even now, I think they're playing like reruns of previous games just so people can get that, you know, fix in. Hopefully the older games, they don't remember what the outcomes were. So that excitement, you know, what's gonna happen?

• 31:34Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm on BBC TV on reruns back in the UK. I'm famous all over.

• 31:38Heather Berlin?

  Right, right, exactly. Um, people have forgotten who wins, so it's a whole new game again.

• 31:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Heather Berlin?

  But, you know, so there's going to be these competing factors, you know? One is, and which it is basically on a, on a larger scale too, is like wanting to go back to normal, wanting to go back to going and enjoying a game. Um, mixed with the anxiety of, you know, and the fear of what if I catch this, this virus? And so everybody's calibration is going to be different. For some people, the anxiety outweighs the, the pleasure. So it, it won't be as fun for them to go to the game anymore because this fear will supersede it. Right? For others, the calculation will be different. I'm willing to take the risks because the enjoyment will be so high for me. So you're going to see a certain type of person, a subsegment of the population who are going to be going to the games.

• 32:28Heather Berlin?

  I wouldn't be surprised, even if they didn't put social distancing in place, saying like, for example, only half the stadium could be filled. If they said, anybody can go to a game. I bet you people would sort of self-constrain their behavior. So it'd still be a half-full stadium because there is going to be many people who just don't feel comfortable going. Right, so the people who do go will be a subset and then there's going to be safety measures in place to give them either real feeling of safety or some sort of psychological feeling of safety, you know, whether it be like distributing hand sanitizer, it'll have some actual physical effect, but a lot of it will be the psychological effect of feeling safer, which will again outweigh the fear.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is sports just another kind of entertainment? If, let's say I don't go to stadiums, but I consume sports on my, you know, eighty-two inch television and then there is no sports. Is it, is sports withdrawal different from, I mean, I have other options, I can watch movies, I can, you know, play video games, there are other things I can do, it's not some unique thing in terms of how it distracts me. So, you as a professional, would you swap something in, in place of it? Or do you try to have them get over what they're missing?

• 33:39Chuck Nice?

  Now, once you get an eighty-two inch television, why would you do anything? Why would you go anywhere? I got an eighty-two inch TV, man!

• 33:48Heather Berlin?

  Well, I think there are two issues there. One is just in general, what is the difference between going to a live event, whether it's Broadway, or the movies, or a sports event, versus watching it alone at home? And there is an added element, there's that social, that community feeling of, you know, we're all in this together. Also, people reacting next to you affects how you react, right? We tend to laugh louder in a movie theater because others around us are laughing, or cry more easily, so that, you know, this is what we call social facilitation effect, will be a dimension that's lost when you're just simply watching it from home. You're not all in it together, it's not a community, you're not hearing other people's reactions. So that's one element that you can't really replace.

• 34:29Heather Berlin?

  But then whether you can substitute in another form of entertainment for sports, I don't think so. I think that there's something unique about, you know, the type of person who is addicted to a sport, let's say they love, they're following their favorite basketball team, you know, that is meaningful in itself, and if you go and put on, you know, a film instead, that's not going to give them their same hit, you know, with the adrenaline and the competitiveness as the sports game would give.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hadn't, I hadn't heard it articulated until just now. It's fascinating. I am more prone to cry in a movie theater, watching a movie. With a collective audience than I am just alone watching the film and to laugh a little louder. That's right. That's kind of weird that we do that. That's just creepy.

• 35:14Heather Berlin?

  We're social creatures and so we we pick up cues from other people about how we're supposed to respond. Again, a lot of it is unconscious, but that does affect our behavior.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want that to be true.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to believe that I'm in some flow of social energy.

• 35:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Fans are tribal, right? And I know fans in different sports, that's their life, seven days a week, rinse, repeat. How? How can they nurse themselves through this successfully?

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, where's the tribalism fit into this, Heather?

• 35:51Heather Berlin?

  One thing you can do is you can enact the same behaviors you would do if you were going to the game. So and some people do this, you know, at home, dress up in the team jersey, you know, paint your face. Maybe you can, you know, have other people on Zoom who are also dressed up and you're all watching the game together. You know, that sense of camaraderie, you know, get one of those big pointy fingers or whatever, the foam things and. But you can collectively watch it on Zoom together and try to engage in or whatever video conferencing you like to use. That you can simulate those experiences. Obviously, it's not the same, but even when, say, I'm doing telehealth or therapy.

• 36:29Heather Berlin?

  You know, it's obviously better to be with the person in the flesh, but you can you can at least have something like seeing a video of someone is better than just on the phone. Right? And that's better than just typing to somebody. So the more sensory elements you can add in, the more you can simulate the real experience, the better it will be for people.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so that works. So, okay, so. So there's the the home kit.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, I just I'd just rather watch the game by myself. I mean, that sounds awful.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be a little weird at home. The home kit has paint for your belly and the finger and the popcorn, a hot dog.

• 37:13Gary O'Reilly?

  The thing is, all franchises, Chuck, are going to find new ways to get revenue because they've lost all in stadium revenue. So they're going to do deals with pizza and Grubhub, phone finger people, beers. This is gonna how it goes.

• 37:28Chuck Nice?

  I was just about to say that we're laughing, but Neil, you may have just given some sports teams a really good idea.

• 37:37Heather Berlin?

  Hey, do I get some credit? Do I get some credit for this?

• 37:42Heather Berlin?

  Neil's gonna get a share of this.

• 37:45Gary O'Reilly?

  We'll send you a promo code for beer.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, I'm a Yankee fan. So if I went to the store and I say, here's a Yankee home fan kit with all those things, I might consider buying that. I'm just saying.

• 37:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we got to bring this segment to a close. Heather, thanks for stepping in and helping us try to make sense of this pandemic and all the facets that it has manifested. We'll be back with our next segment of StarTalk Sports Edition in the Corona-verse.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about sports in the Corona-verse. And we brought back from our first segment Tobias Moskowitz. Toby, we can call you Toby.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Yes, please do.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. You're an expert in analyzing the things that influence outcome in sports and as the title of your recent book indicates. And let me get, could you tell me the whole title of that book?

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Band. Games Are Played and Sports Are Won. Geez, I can't even remember it myself.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never mind.

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Got the first part, yeah. It's been a decade.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, I think I've got it officially written out here if you want, if you need help on this. So, scorecasting, the hidden influences behind how sports are played and games are won. And so, and I got Gary with me back in this third segment, of course, and Chuck Nice. So, what we do in our third segment is we just sort of free associate and reflect on the subject at hand. And Gary, did you have any leftover questions that you thought you wouldn't get to in that first segment?

• 40:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Back in the earlier part of the show, Toby brilliantly analyzed home field advantage and the fact that in an empty stadium, basically evaporates to nothing over about 20%. And then we spoke with Heather Berlin about empty stadiums and the fact that it weirds you out. And then there's this, I think it's like an observer effect. I could do something brilliant, like a Michael Jordan slam dunk or a Lionel Messi dribble and a run. And yet I have no, I have no energy seeping from the arena towards me. And it's a weird, I mean economically, as an athlete, I'm almost bankrupt at that point because I feed off of the applause.

• 40:47Gary O'Reilly?

  And it must then translate itself, Toby, through a team. I mean, and then goes through the fans, goes through the franchise. It's a weird, weird scenario.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Gary, I think the question is even bigger than that if we're going to slam Toby with this. So, so I don't know that anyone, let's look at track and field, for example. I don't know that, it's not a team sport, of course, but it's, it relates to my point. I don't know anyone who has set a world record running by themselves, right? The fact that there is competition there.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is a propellant, a propelling force for, for a competitive person who's participating.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now, if in an empty stadium, no one is really performing as high as they would have, will the whole, will all the sports just look, um, depressed in some way? Or under energized compared to what it would otherwise be?

• 41:48Speaker 03

  I think, I think it's a great question. I think the answer, if I had to guess, the answer is probably yes. And you will see a more muted effect. It just stands to reason that any of us, we're all human. We love to be cheered. Some of us love to be booed, um, but we love to be cheered most of all. Uh, but we like, we like attention and, and, and we love competition, right? So I think your, your point is right. Anybody who's run at any level or competed at any level, you know that someone who pushes you is going to cause you to perform better. So the one big question is, will the quality of the games we watch go down? There's a little bit of this. I mean, if you've ever watched an exhibition tennis match, right? Where it doesn't count. Ah, they take off a few points, right? They, they sort of slap the ball around a little. They're still great players.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  It's fun to watch, but it's not the same as a Wimbledon final in front of a full stadium.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been the problem, this, this has been the problem with the Pro Bowl. It's been a perennial problem.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Pro Bowl, the, the game doesn't mean anything. It doesn't. And we had a little bit of that problem with the baseball All-Star game. And they finally put in the rule, like the winning league gets home field advantage. It's home field advantage. It can matter, but I'm saying, you got home field advantage for your league in the, in the. In the World Series. In, in the World Series. So there's, there, you got something in the game, you know, some money in the game. I mean, some, uh, what's the term? How's the term go? Skin in the game. So you, so they made it so that you got some skin in the game by doing so.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Well, and, and I think, look, I, I, I think that's right. I think we can solve the problem of making it count. Right? We can have the NBA playoffs and no, with no fans. Those players are still going to want to win a championship.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  But. You know, performing in front of a crowd is a whole nother issue. And it'll be interesting to see what happens. You know, there's also the fan experience, right? Watching sports, so sometimes, you know, my, my, my family will tell me, oh, can you mute it when you watch the game? And I'm thinking, that's not fun. I want to hear the crowd.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  You want to hear the crowd, right?

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they're talking about even pumping in artificial applause and cheering for certain plays for the fans. I don't know if this will actually happen, but it's not, I don't know how that's going to help the players.

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, TV sitcoms have been doing that since the 1950s, so.

• 44:03Gary O'Reilly?

  But they got good at it, Neil. Imagine you've got booing at the wrong time, applause at the wrong time. You've got someone who's not syncing the soundtrack with the picture.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  That's the game I want to watch. I want to watch that game where the home team is booing their own players.

• 44:22Gary O'Reilly?

  I used to come to come on my games when I played.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Toby, there's another very short, I'm a little older than you, I think. There was an experiment, I think it was conducted in the 1970s. Did NBC do it where they decided to broadcast a game, I think it was a football or a baseball game, with no announcers?

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I heard about this. As though you, say, so you had to read it in your history books.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  I wasn't alive in the 70s, but.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, Toby, they were still wearing leather helmets.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so your TV experience would be as though you were live at the game without having someone always chattering at you. And so, but if that's, if that's too far back in the history books for you, you won't have a comment on it. But it just seemed like another odd difference in how the game is being relayed to the fan.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, and I think, look, during this time, I think you're going to see a lot of experimentation, right? They, they need to get fans re-engaged. So one, one option is you may have, suppose the NBA says, we're all going to play in Las Vegas and all the players are going to be quarantined there for months. I don't know how they're going to do this, but let's suppose that happens. You may have all the other players attending all the games. Maybe instead of fans cheering, what you're doing is posting down at the bottom of the screen Twitter feeds from LeBron and from others who are commenting on what's going on on the court. You need something else to get people engaged.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Toby, I just realized, you said something so obvious that was.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  was oblivious to me. If you bring every NBA player to one place, you quarantine them for two weeks, so you know they don't have the virus, then they are a virus-free community.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you restrict their travel and access of others to them, then they can just run the entire season, you're right, in one location. Maybe you need a couple of stadiums or a couple of arenas, but then, nothing stops it at that point. And then they become the fans for their own team.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  That's right. As a basketball fan, I would love to hear LeBron comment on whatever, you know, Damian Lillard did that game. I mean, that would be interesting, right?

• 46:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and then you're gonna have a bunch of guys hating on, you know, they're gonna, players they like, they're gonna see as good, and players they don't.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  That's even more entertaining.

• 46:48Chuck Nice?

  In a way, that is. In a way, that is more entertaining, you know?

• 46:51Gary O'Reilly?

  So that itself becomes a reality TV show.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 46:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, in theory, perfect, but this is, this is the NBA herding billionaire cats. And as we've seen from The Last Dance, Dennis Rodman wants to go to Vegas for 58 hours, 60 hours, five days, he goes. Nothing Michael Jordan can do about it. I just think everything has to be perfect. The catering staff, the laundry service, every aspect of locking down these teams in an environment has to be thematic. You cannot allow anything in.

• 47:27Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what you could do instead? Instead of the entire season, I mean, what you could do is kind of a March Madness. So, instead of having an entire season, you turn the season into kind of a tournament.

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, very good. And then it's an abbreviated season.

• 47:47Chuck Nice?

  It's an abbreviated season, but with the-

• 47:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have the intensity that you want.

• 47:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, but now, I don't ever want to miss a game. Let's be honest. You know, I love the NBA. I watch when the playoffs start. I mean, if I happen to catch a game, I'll happen to catch a game, you know, and I'm a huge Sixers fan, but I'm not interested until the playoffs start, you know?

• 48:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Toby, is this something that you can recommend? I mean, do they have an ear for you?

• 48:18Speaker 03

  That I don't, I don't think so, though. Maybe somebody who may have near four, but that's an interesting idea, Chuck. I mean, actually, that would be very exciting. And look-

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just have a single elimination tournament.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. Forget the season.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 48:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who needs the whole season? Just get in there right now.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  There's no question people would watch. There's no question players would be up for it.

• 48:38Chuck Nice?

  And the cool thing is that, so you want to talk about the quarantine, you actually mitigate the chances of the spread of the virus, because when a team is eliminated, they leave now. You don't have to worry about them. It's like, you're gone, buddy. So, you know, but you could do like little mini-series instead of one single game eliminations. You could do mini-series as a part of the tournament, and then move from the mini-series goes to single game and then to playoffs, you know, so-

• 49:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think we solved this. We just did it right here on StarTalk.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  And if you want to create more revenue, add gambling to it.

• 49:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  March Madness is the biggest betting, you know, Vegas has missed 400 million from March Madness, just in March, you know-

• 49:25Chuck Nice?

  We'll get that back in one week.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Exactly. Right now, the highest betting thing is Russian ping pong, Russian table tennis. The only thing you can bet on.

• 49:35Chuck Nice?

  No way. Wow. Wow, that is sad and pathetic. I mean, it's not even Chinese table tennis.

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Toby, thanks for staying in this third segment and chewing the fat with us. No, we don't call it that. What are we supposed to call it?

• 49:53Chuck Nice?

  We call it shoot the shit.

• 49:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shoot the shit.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Well, thanks for having. Really enjoyed it.

• 50:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, excellent. And Gary, always good to have you and Chuck on this. And you've been listening to and we hope you've been watching StarTalk Sports Edition, Sports in the Corona-verse. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you