Aside from the fatalities caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there’s a huge economic impact of the disease globally.
One of the hardest hit sectors is the aviation industry, as air travel has been restricted in some countries. This has also affected tourism, with the latest being the cancellation of various crowd-related events such as football.
Air travel has reduced drastically amidst the growing fears about the pandemic. Some airlines have had to waste thousands of gallons of fuel running almost empty flights.
In the United States of America for instance, the stock market crashed to its worst day since 1987 since the outbreak of the virus. Several business-related events around the world have been cancelled, leading to the loss of millions of dollars.
Here in Ghana, there’s an impact of the football break on those in the betting industry, a fast-growing sector.
Citi Business News’ Michael Ogbodu visited some soccer betting companies in Accra and some football enthusiasts say they are not happy about the impact of the coronavirus consequences on betting activities in the country.
Maxwell Adah, a football enthusiast, who is also into active soccer betting, said, “I am not doing anything at home, so I came to sit here. If there was a match, I will be watching it and make some money too. But right now, there are no matches.”
To him, though the betting companies have different virtual games, like Spin and Soccer, that isn’t enough to occupy them.
“Since there are no matches, we resort to the virtual games where we get money,” he said.
Many others like him are not happy about the Union of European Football Associations’ (UEFA) decision to suspend the Champions League and Europa League due to the Coronavirus pandemics.
But three weeks of no UEFA league matches isn’t all gloomy for some people at the local level where betting companies as well as those who patronize them, are worried due to a dip in revenue as top flight football activities have halted in the interim.
Theophilus Nii Armah Quaye, who offers public viewing of football matches for a fee, is also worried about the impact of the break in some games on his business.
“The suspension of the league matches would affect me. That is why we should be prepared and it is also good to have two or more business streams. I also have a generator rental business, so I depend on the revenue from that stream for now”, he said.