Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis raised eyebrows across the state and country Monday when Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings revealed DeSantis deemed professional wrestling to be “essential business” amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not just WWE and All Elite Wrestling, though — a memorandum circulated Thursday actually deemed all professional sports to be “essential services.”
“Employees at a professional sports and media production with a national audience — including any athletes, entertainers, production team, executive team, media team and any others necessary to facilitate including services supporting such production — fall under “essential,” according to Jared Moskowitz, the state coordinating officer for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
On Tuesday, DeSantis elaborated on his thinking, suggesting wrestling matches, NASCAR races, and even a heads-up golf matchup between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson could be held in Florida.
“People have been starved for content,” DeSantis said at his news conference in Tallahassee.
What it probably won’t immediately affect, however, are the major pro teams in South Florida. The NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB all suspended operations league-wide last month. Games are on hold, practice facilities are closed and staff members are working from home. The leagues will make the decision when teams can resume using facilities, although now state law won’t stand in the way whenever leagues lift restrictions.
DeSantis’ ruling does open up Florida as a possibility should a league choose a remote, isolated neutral site to play all games at. The NHL reportedly mulled resuming games in North Dakota. MLB reportedly considered a plan to resume play in early May with all 30 teams playing games in Arizona, where spring training is held annually, and the NBA reportedly considered holding a playoff tournament in Nevada, where the NBA Summer League is played annually.
Spring training is also held in Florida and the NBA Summer League had games in Orlando from 2001-2018. If pro sports are “essential” in Florida, the state becomes one of the more realistic options to host one of these major sports leagues if such a decision is made.
Forty-three states currently have stay-at-home orders, and Florida is the only one of the 43 with a known exception for professional sports, paving the way for the state to pioneer a return to live sports. None of the major sports leagues have indicated any sort of decision regarding the resumption of play is imminent, though, as they have to weigh travel limitations, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations to limit the size of gatherings, and the prospect of isolating athletes, coaches and “essential” personnel from their families. MLB games, for example, require more than 50 people in attendance, which exceeds the CDC’s recommendation of a maximum gathering size.
“Plans may be too strong of a word,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said on Fox Business. “Ideas may be a better word.”
WWE, which aired Wrestlemania 36 on a tape delay April 5 and 6, returned to live matches Monday when it broadcast WWE Raw live from its WWE Performance Center in Orlando, and it plans to continue airing matches from its Performance Center studio moving forward.
Florida is also a logical destination for a potential Woods-Mickelson match, which Mickelson said on Twitter last month they are “working on.”
The UFC could also theoretically hold matches in Florida, although Disney and ESPN reportedly asked the mixed martial arts league to call off a match planned for Saturday in California.
DeSantis’ mention of NASCAR is what might have the most clear bearing on the Miami metropolitan area. NASCAR was scheduled to hold a series of races at Homestead-Miami Speedway last month — culminating with the Dixie Vodka 400 — before the coronavirus prompted its indefinite postponement. NASCAR already announced it has suspended racing until May, although it hopes to reschedule events, which means Homestead would be a logical site for any sort of return.
Ultimately, these decisions won’t be up to DeSantis, though. Each league will have to make its own choice. Florida now just gives them an avenue to return in some capacity.
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