Anecdotal evidence suggests that football matches may have played a role in the spread of COVID-19 all over Europe. Nevertheless, from a scientific point of view, the impact of football matches on the spread of COVID-19 remains unclear. In this paper we study, via a quantitative analysis, the case of Italy, a country badly affected by COVID, and one where attending football matches is very popular. We consider the impact of matches played in January and February 2020 on the dynamic of the pandemic in March and April the same year. Our results, which consider all levels of Italian professional football, and the highest level of amateur football, show that matches played in January and February had an impact on the evolution of the pandemic in March and April. These results suggest that great care must be taken before considering re-opening stadia.
AlfanoV.CicatielloL.ErcolanoS. (2021). School openings and the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. A provincial-level analysis using the synthetic control method. Health Policy, 125(9), 1200–1207. Published online 2021 Jul 2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.06.010
3.
AlfanoV.ErcolanoS. (2020). The efficacy of lockdown against COVID-19: A cross-country panel analysis. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 18, 509–517. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-020-00596-3
4.
AlfanoV. (2021). The effects of school closures on COVID-19: A cross-country panel analysis. Appl Health Econ Health Policy, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-021-00702-z
5.
AlfanoV.ErcolanoS. (2021a). Stay at home! governance quality and effectiveness of lockdown. Social Indicator Research, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02742-
6.
AlfanoV.ErcolanoS. (2021b). Social capital, quality of institutions and lockdown. Evidence from Italian provinces. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 59, 31–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.strueco.2021.08.001
7.
BoeriT.SevergniniB. (2014). The decline of professional football in Italy. In GoddardJ.SloaneP. (Ed.), Handbook on the economics of professional football (chap. 19, pp. 322–335). Edward Elgar Publishing.
CardazziA.HumphreysB. R.RuseskiJ. E.SoebbingB.WatanabeN. S. (2020). Professional sporting events increase seasonal influenza mortality in US cities (Technical Report 3628649). SSRN, 2020.
DaviesN. G.KlepacP.LiuY., Prem, K., Jit, M., CMMID COVID-19 working group and Eggo, R. M. (2020). Age-dependent effects in the transmission and control of COVID-19 epidemics. Nature Medicine, 26, 1205–1211. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0962-9
12.
ElgarF. J.StefaniakA.WohlM. J. A. (2020). The trouble with trust: Time-series analysis of social capital, income inequality, and COVID-19 deaths in 84 countries. Social Science & Medicine, 263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113365
FigueiredoA. M.Daponte CodinaA.FigueiredoM.SaezM.Cabrera LeónA. (2020). Impact of lockdown on COVID-19 incidence and mortality in China: An interrupted time series study. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. E-pub: 6 April. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.20.256701
15.
FischerK. (2021). Thinning out spectators: Did football matches contribute to the second COVID-19 wave in Germany?https://ssrn.com/abstract=3793379
HossainM.FaisalN. H. (2021). Modeling aerosol cloud aerodynamic during human coughing, talking, and breathing actions. AIP Advances, 11(4). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0042952
18.
ISTAT (2005). Lo sport che cambia. Istituto nazionale di Statistica.
19.
ISTAT and Italian Ministry of Health. (2020). Primi risultati dell’indagine di sieroprevalenza sul SARS-COV-2 (Technical report).
20.
La RosaG.ManciniP.Bonanno FerraroG.VeneriC.IaconelliM.BonadonnaL.LucentiniL.SuffrediniE. (2020). SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating in northern Italy since December 2019: Evidence from environmental monitoring. Science of the Total Environment, 750, 141711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141711
21.
LauH.KhosrawipourV.KocbachP.MikolajczykA.SchubertJ.BaniaJ.KhosrawipourT. (2020). The positive impact of lockdown in Wuhan on containing the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Journal of Travel Medicine, 27(3). https://doi.org10.1093/jtm/taaa037.
22.
LauerS. A.GrantzK. H.BiQ.JonesF. K.ZhengQ.MeredithH., Azman, A. S., Reich, N. G., & Lessler, J. (2020). The incubation period of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from publicly reported confirmed cases: Estimation and application. Annals of Internal Medicine, 172(9), 577–582. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-0504
23.
NeymanJ. (1934). On the two different aspects of the representative method: The method of stratified sampling and the method of purposive selection. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 97(4), 558–625. https://doi.org/10.2307/2342192
24.
NicastriE.D’AbramoA.FaggioniG.De SantisR., Mariano, A., Lepore, L., Molinari, F., Petralito, G., Fillo, S., Munzi, D., Corpolongo, A., Bordi, L., Carletti, F., Castiletti, C., Colavita, F., Lalle, E., Bevilacqua, N., Giancola, M. L., Scorzolini, L.,…, On Behalf Of Inmi And The Italian Army Covid-Study Groups. (2020). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in a paucisymptomatic patient: Epidemiological and clinical challenge in settings with limited community transmission, Italy. Eurosurveillance, 25, 2000230. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.11.2000230
ReadeJ. J.SchreyerD.SingletonC. (2020). Stadium attendance demand during the COVID-19 crisis: Early empirical evidence from Belarus. Applied Economics Letters, 28(18), 1542–1547. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2020.1830933
28.
ReadeJ. J.SingletonC. (2020). Demand for public events in the COVID-19 pandemic: A case study of European football. European Sport Management Quarterly. 21(3), 391–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2020.1841261
29.
RiccardoF.AjelliM.AndrianouX.BellaA.Del MansoM.FabianiM., Bellino, S., Boros, S., Urdiales, A. M., Marziano, V., Rota, M. C., Filia, A., D'Ancona, F., Siddu, A., Punzo, O., Trentini, F., Guzzetta, G., Poletti, P., Stefanelli, P., …, COVID-19 working group. (2020). Epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 cases in Italy and estimates of the reproductive numbers one month into the epidemic. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20056861v1
30.
SassanoM.McKeeM.RicciardiW.BocciaS. (2020). Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other infections at large sports gatherings: A surprising gap in our knowledge. Frontiers in Medicine, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2020.00277
31.
StoeckerC.SandersN. J.BarrecaA. (2016). Success is something to sneeze at: Influenza mortality in cities that participate in the super bowl. American Journal of Health Economics, 2(1), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1162/AJHE_a_00036
