Which spectator sports are more viable from a public health standpoint during the coronavirus epidemic? Less viable?
Baseball appears to be in the less viable category:
Auto racing (NASCAR, Formula One) might be promising. Ditto for Golf.
I’d argue that combat sports might work, with strict testing and pre-bout quarantines for contestants, coaches, and refs. Plus sanitizing the ring before and after the contest.
So are you asking about more or less “viable” for the players or for the spectators? I immediately took your thread title to mean “for the spectators” but your examples are focused on the players.
For spectators, the preferred sports would be outdoors rather than indoors, and with fewer spectators rather than more.
Probably a relatively safer sport: Pro golf. Outdoors and relatively few spectators. Not crowds like at the World Series.
Pro baseball, football (of any variety): Not so good. Outdoors, but typically big crowds.
Pro tennis: Maybe a little better. Outdoors, not quite such big crowds.
Basketball: Indoors, typically, so not so good.
Pro boxing or wrestling: Yuck. Indoors, big crowds, often rowdy with lots of yelling and screaming.
…eliminate Covid-19, and then you can do this. All sports are back at all levels (except international competition), stadiums are packed, no social distancing or masks.
IMHO: if Covid-19 is under relative control, as it is in much of the world, then I think that discussion about what sports can and can be played and how to do that safely is a reasonable one to be had.
But I can’t believe that in America you are looking to open schools and are trying to open restaurants and trying to figure out how to play sports safely when at the very same time Covid-19 is spiralling out of control. So which spectator sports are viable? From a public health standpoint in the context of an out-of-control pandemic in America I would say “none of them.” Take the country into a hard lockdown for two months. Ramp up testing and tracing. Bring things under control. Then see how things go from there.
I was assuming the spectators would be watching their televisions, seats would be empty, and players would reside in the US where, as Banquet Bear correctly notes, the pandemic is very much not under control.
Individual sports like figure skating or shotput might be ok, though there are still coaches and the camera crew to consider. Also, policy could vary with geography: the Miami Marlins reside in a COVID hotspot for example. I suppose sporting events from first world countries like Italy and New Zealand could be broadcast, though I don’t know whether they could pull in the ratings.
Sadly, as a practical matter, I don’t think this is possible for this country, even with a good president and increased citizen compliance.
Back to the OP’s question: since we know there are/will be attempts to get things going again for the rest of the year, I think we’ll see firsthand what’s practical and what’s not. But remember that athletes are imperfect people too, and the more people that are involved in something, the more likely it is that you’ll have a significant number of scofflaws (and you only need one).
The Japan Sumo Association canceled the May tournament and moved the July tournament from Nagoya to Tokyo and started it a week or two late. They are allowing crowds up to 25% capacity, but they haven’t been sold out every day. I believe they used to take sips of water and spit them out just before the bout in accordance with ancient rituals, but this tournament they apparently just mime doing that. Wrestlers below the top divisions are generally already not in contact much with the general public, and now basically none of them are, ever. One wrestler was caught going out partying at night and was forced to withdraw from the tournament, and a disciplinary committee will meet after the current tournament is over, with some (though not all or even most) people thinking he will be expelled or forced to retire, while more people think he will be given a suspension for several tournaments which would drop him out of the highly paid ranks.
One lower divisional wrestler has died, a few others infected though I don’t know all the details.