SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2024

The disruption caused by COVID-19 on global sports events is unprecedented. This paper aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the economic outcomes and team performances of two major soccer tournaments, the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship, by adopting comparative analysis and linear regression models. Through revenue analysis, the research discovered that the revenue of the FIFA World Cup 2022 was hardly influenced by COVID-19, while the revenue of the UEFA EURO 2020 was significantly diminished from its expected revenue without the pandemic. The explanation for such difference in the events’ revenues was attributed to the fact that dates of the two events were in different periods of the pandemic. A positive correlation was also identified between the large difference between expected and actual revenues/expenditures in the absence of COVID-19 and the stringency index of the pandemic response, suggesting that a higher pandemic severeness would impose more economic problems on the event organizers: FIFA and UEFA. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that stricter government interventions on the pandemic had a marginally positive effect on team performance improvements, though the extent was limited.