Supply Line in Sports—Can We Insulate It from Catastrophic Events like COVID-19?

COVID-19-induced pandemic has created havoc in all walks of life and has affected the entire length and breadth of mother earth. Sports have been affected too barring possibly a few theory-heavy sports like chess. However, what we see and read in print and digital media is only the tip of the iceberg. For example, each sport at the elite level is coming back in an extremely controlled environment, but it is the supply line right from the grass-roots level that is suffering the most. While the dearth in the supply line will be felt any time between the next five and ten years, it is surprising that there is not much focus from the academic realm to mitigate the risk. This work first investigates the present hierarchy of the supply line generically and then identifies high-impact areas in the hierarchy. The rest of the work revolves around strategy, finance, operations and technology aspects of sports management to find out a solution. The study suggests that the top layer has to ingest cash down the line to create safe environments at lower levels rather than waiting for government aid. To avoid scaling issues, each country should select strategically some sports, adopt a selective hierarchy by tailoring the supply line for those disciplines and take all the help technology can offer for theoretical preaching, for example, virtual and augmented reality technology.