As coronavirus cases continue to spread across the globe, the majority of sporting events are being cancelled or postponed.
The most significant one was the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which had to be held this summer in Japan. However, the International Olympic Committee and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to postpone the event to next summer, where it will now take place from July 23 to August 8, 2021.
1. Football
- South Korea: the football league season restarted on May 8 after several weeks of postponement.
- Germany: the top-flight Bundesliga resumed on May 16 after a two-month pause.
- The English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, Spanish La Liga and Turkey’s Super Lig resumed in June after a three-month suspension.
- The Confederation of African Football (CAF) postponed the two-legged semi-finals of the African Champions League that were supposed to take place in May.
- The CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) Nations League Finals, which were scheduled for June, have been suspended. The finals will be rescheduled for a later date in venues to be determined.
- Russia: the Russian Football Union agreed to immediately suspend all competitions at a meeting on March 17.
- Belgium: the Belgian Cup final was postponed and took place on August 1.
- The African Nations Championship 2020 tournament, which was supposed to take place in April in Cameroon, has been postponed indefinitely.
- This year’s Copa America has been postponed until 2021. The 12-team tournament had originally been scheduled to take place from June 12 to July 12 in Colombia and Argentina.
- The Euro 2020 tournament has been postponed to 2021. UEFA decided that the tournament would now take place from June 11 to July 11, 2021.
- UEFA also postponed the Euro 2021 Women’s championship, and it will now be played in England from July 6 to July 31.
- England: The women’s football league has been cancelled.
- On April 1, UEFA suspended all Champions League and Europa League matches until further notice.
- All national team games scheduled for June have also been postponed.
- FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation have agreed to postpone the Asian World Cup qualifying matches in March and June.
- Asian Champions League matches have been postponed and the start of the knockout rounds has been moved to September.
- The Confederation of African Football has postponed two rounds of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers scheduled for March 25-31.
2. Marathons
- The London Marathon has been postponed until October 4. Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona marathons have also been postponed.
- The Boston Marathon was firstly postponed for five months, and then cancelled for the first time in its 124-year history. Instead, a virtual event will take place in which participants will have to verify that they ran 26.2 miles in order to receive a medal.
- On March 1, the Tokyo Marathon, which usually attracts 300,000 participants, was restricted to only 200 runners.
3. Olympic and Paralympics Games
- The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been postponed from July 23 to August 8, 2021.
- Paralympic Games have been postponed as well from August 24 to September 5, 2021.
4. Athletics
- The traditional Berlin athletics meeting (ISTAF) is scheduled for September 13 and will take place in front of up to 3,500 fans.
- The World Athletics Championships scheduled to take place in Oregon in August 2021 have been postponed to July 2022 to avoid overlapping with the rescheduled Olympic Games.
- The World Athletics Indoor Championships, scheduled in Nanjing from March 13-15, have been postponed until next year.
- The World Para Athletics European Championships previously scheduled for June 2-7, has now been postponed to 2021.
5. Formula One
- Formula One cancelled the season-opening Australian GP after a McLaren team member contracted the coronavirus. The race was scheduled to take place on March 15.
- Formula One World Championship, which was supposed to start in mid-March, had been postponed and it started behind closed doors in Austria on July 5.
- The Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix can only take place without spectators.
- The Dutch Grand Prix, the Canadian Grand Prix, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the Bahrain Grand Prix, the Vietnam Grand Prix, and the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai have all been postponed.
- The Monaco Grand Prix and the French Grand Prix were cancelled.
6. Tennis
- According to the International Tennis Federation (ITF), 900 tournaments of its circuits had been postponed.
- The 2020 Wimbledon tennis championships have been cancelled. This is the first cancellation in history since World War II.
- The French Open has been postponed until September 20 – October 4.
- In California, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells was cancelled.
- In China, the Xi’an Open and the Kunming Open have both been cancelled.
7. Basketball
- Europe’s top two club basketball competitions have ended the season without naming any winners due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The 2020-21 EuroLeague and EuroCup seasons will start on October 1 and September 30 respectively.
- The German basketball league (BBL) concluded its season with a 10-team tournament in the first weekend of June.
- On March 11, the National Basketball Association (NBA) decided to suspend the season. The season restarted on July 30.
- The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) postponed the 2020 regular season.
8. Rugby
- World Rugby’s governing body announced on May 15 that it has postponed all test matches scheduled for July due to travel restrictions and health measures implemented to stop the spread of the virus.
- On March 13, the French rugby federation said that it was suspending all of its competitions due to the outbreak.
- At least three Six Nations matches have been postponed.
- The women’s Six Nations game between Scotland and France was postponed after a Scottish player tested positive for Covid-19.
- The Singapore and Hong Kong legs of the World Rugby Sevens Series have been postponed to October.
- The first England-Australia rugby league series has been canceled.
9. MotoGP
- The opening two rounds of the season in Qatar were cancelled.
- The Thailand race has been postponed.
- In Texas and Argentina, the April’s rounds have been postponed to November.
- The Spanish Grand Prix scheduled for May 3 has also been postponed.
10. Table tennis
- The world championships in Busan, South Korea, have been firstly pushed back from March to June and then rescheduled for February-March 2021.
11. Golf
- In the US, the return of professional golf was scheduled for June 8 with the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas.
- The Saudi Ladies International, the first women’s professional golf event to be staged in Saudi Arabia, has been rescheduled for October 8-11.
- The 2020 Masters Tournament has been provisionally rescheduled for November 9-15.
- The 149th Open Championship due to be played at Royal St George’s from July 16-19 has been firstly cancelled and later postponed to 2021.
12. Swimming
- The short course world championships, previously scheduled for December 2020 in Abu Dhabi, will now be staged in December 2021.
- The 2021 aquatics world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, will now be held in May 2022.
- Canada’s Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic swimming trials have been rescheduled for April 2021. The meet will be condensed into a five-day program from the original seven days.
13. Horse racing
- The Dubai World Cup, one of the world’s richest horse races, scheduled for March, has been postponed to next year.
- The 146th running of the Kentucky Derby has been moved to September 5.
14. Winter sports
- The World Cup finals in Cortina, the final races of the men’s Alpine skiing World Cup, the women’s World Ice Hockey Championships, the Ice Hockey World Championship, and the World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal were all cancelled.
- The Speed Skating World Championships in Seoul have been postponed to October.
- The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) has cancelled the remainder of its season after temporarily suspending its playoffs.
15. Baseball
- The final qualification tournament for the Olympics in Taiwan has been postponed from April to June.
- South Korea’s professional league restarted its season on May 5 in empty stadiums.
- The MLB also delayed its opening day, which was scheduled for March 26.
- MLB games scheduled to be played in Mexico City and San Juan, Puerto Rico, have been cancelled.
