Sports are going to look awfully different worldwide over the coming weeks and months because of the coronavirus. We’ve already seen European soccer leagues – notably the Italian Serie A – make the call to play matches behind closed doors, with no fans in attendance. While a drastic step, it’s going to become the norm around Europe and, sooner or later, here in the United States.
Just how rare is it? Internationally it’s not common, but there’s a long history of games, mostly in soccer, being played in empty stadiums for a variety of reasons: safety, weather, punishment, etc. But in the U.S., it’s only happened a handful of times. What would such events look like? Here’s what history has shown:
Farmers Insurance Open: Torrey Pines has twice been forced to host a round of an event without fans. First, in 2016 weather tore up the course, with trees downed throughout to the point where, for Monday’s final round, no fans were admitted. Brandt Snedeker was the only one who finished below par in the final round in winning the event.
Fast forward to 2018, at the same event, and again a delayed finish to Monday forced fans out at Torrey Pines. Jason Day and Alex Noren went shot-for-shot over the course of five sudden-death playoff holes, before eventually it became too dark to finish on Sunday. Because the PGA and the tournament officials hadn’t expected such a finish, they didn’t have the appropriate staff on-site to guarantee fan safety.
They wouldn’t have seen much anyways: Day won on the first hole with a birdie.
Baltimore Orioles: In midst of city-wide protests in Baltimore sparked by the death of Freddie Gray, Major League Baseball moved up the start time of an April 2015 game between the Orioles and White Sox. More drastically, to avoid any violence the game was played without fans, the first time a major North American sport would be played in an empty stadium. It was... odd... to say the least.
2012 AT&T National: A strong windstorm downed so many trees at Congressional Country Club in Maryland in 2012 that the third round of the AT&T National was played without a crowd. Instead of a gallery, the sound of crews with chainsaws and wood-chippers greeted golfers. Of course, it didn’t slow the biggest audience attraction one bit, as Tiger Woods shot a 67 and wound up winning the event.
Charlotte Checkers: The Carolina Hurricanes’ minor league affiliate found themselves buried under snow twice in a span of three years, with the same outcome. In January 2016 a game against the Chicago Wolves was played in an empty Bojangles Coliseum because of an ice storm.
Then in January 2018 Charlotte was hit with four inches of snow and the entire state of North Carolina was under a state of emergency (yes, you may jest at that in Connecticut... it’s a much bigger deal in North Carolina). So one night after beating the Bridgeport Sound Tigers 3-0 in front of a sold-out crowd, exactly nobody saw the Checkers erase a 3-1 third period deficit to win 4-3. Though there was great social media content to be had.
Iowa Cubs: The first time an American sporting event had no fans in it (for a non-gimmick) was believed to be 2008. The Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate played a home game in Des Moines without any fans after flooding. Because minor league baseball has a very rigid schedule with few off days, the team still played its game against the Nashville Sounds, in what became a 5-4 Iowa win. Why is there no video of this? Because only essential employees were allowed in the stadium. Even the radio broadcast of the game was put off.
The Charleston RiverDogs once purposely held fans out of the stadium until after official attendance was taken for a promotional gimmick (“Nobody Night”) but there were actually about 1,800 people there.
