Survey: Only 48% Of Sports Fans Feel Comfortable Returning To Live Sporting Event In 2020

(CBS4) - It will be a long time before sports fans will feel comfortable filling up a stadium to watch a game again. According to a recent poll from Morning Consult, only 48 percent of sports fans feel comfortable returning to a live sporting event in person before the end of the year because of the coronavirus outbreak. 22 percent feel comfortable attending an event next year and 30 percent don't know when they'll be comfortable attending a sporting event again.

Morning Consult surveyed 1,512 people who identified themselves as sports fans from April 3-5. (That was more than three weeks after the last time a Denver professional sports team competed in a fan-attended event.) Most of them were optimistic the games would continue before the end of the year.

72 percent expect to watch a live professional or college sporting event by the end of the year. 44 percent believe the games will resume sometime by June through the end of the year. 8 percent think the games will return next year.

Despite the majority of fans assuming the games would return by years end, 70 percent want sports leagues to wait until the pandemic is contained and was safe for the fans to attend games before resuming play. Only 16 percent wanted the games to resume as soon as possible, even if it meant playing in empty stadiums.

So far, the PGA Championship and Indianapolis 500 are rescheduled for August. NBA, NHL and MLB have postponed their seasons.

The sports fans demographic has a margin of error of 3 percentage points and the broader sample has a 2-point margin of error.

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