While many countries have made the decision to either cancel their current season or postpone it for at least the next couple of months, here in Poland there are already plans in place to resume the season which stopped on the 9th of March. The last Ekstraklasa (top tier) game before the lockdown was Korona’s 1-0 win over relegation rivals ŁKS Łódź. The season is now set to resume on Friday 29th May and as things stand this will be one of only a handful of European countries to have their professional leagues back up and running. The most notable re-start will be the German Bundesliga which is set to play again this Saturday (16th May), but without any fans. The Polish league (top 3 tiers to resume) and the German league (top 2 to resume) have put precautionary health and safety measures in place to ensure the players and staff working at the game are best protected. The precautionary measures for Polish football include: no spectators, a limit to 50 people in a stadium (players, staff, doctors media), two additional subs during the first 5 games for each team, two additional 5 minute breaks in the 30th and 70th minute for disinfection, and referees to have electronic whistles. So why do I believe that Polish football, specifically the Ekstraklasa, can thrive in these times? Well sport broadcasters have been forced to show repeats of past seasons over the last two months. Some broadcasters even got professional footballers from their respective leagues to play each other at FIFA in order to give the paying subscribers some of their money’s worth. Similarly, with the opportunity to broadcast live football again, broadcasters from around the world will be looking to snap up the rights for the remaining season. While the Bundesliga already has extensive broadcasting deals across the globe set in stone (€1.24bn for 2019/20 shared with Bundesliga2), this is not the case for the likes of the Ekstraklasa. Currently the Ekstraklasa receives €115m over two seasons domestically, making it the 8th most valued league in this sense. However, the Polish league has already received expressions of intent to show the remaining games of the season from broadcasters in Italy, Israel, and Portugal according to sport.pl. The league could attract further attention from higher profile broadcasters such as Sky Sports in the UK who put all their eggs in one basket with Premier League coverage. With the huge uncertainty over when and if the Premier League will resume then if Sky decided to snap up the rights for the remaining matchdays of the Ekstraklasa it would be a major coup for Poland, especially as it gives the players an increased platform to showcase their skills. That Polish football could garner increased worldwide media exposure is shown by the K-League in South Korea which resumed within the last week. Ahead of the restart of the K-League it was revealed that the league had agreed deals in 17 international markets with Australia, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland being amongst them. The K-League also broadcast one game last weekend on Twitter, which was clearly a tactic to boost interest further. This is why I think that the Ekstraklasa can gain a new fanbase in the current pandemic. While the quality might not match the likes of the Premier League, the broadcasters will be desperate to show some live sport. Also, as we have previously seen with British fans showing an interest in the Belarusian league which has continued (as apparently there you can treat the virus by visiting saunas and drinking alcohol), the fans will be less concerned about quality, they just want some live football to watch!
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