COVID-19, Professional Sport and Health and Safety: Australian Cricket – A Case Study

Abstract

COVID-19 played havoc with professional sports. Events were postponed or cancelled; organisations were placed under enormous economic strain; and financial, commercial and governance tensions were exposed. The same organisations then faced the daunting task of having to reformulate competitions and events to be COVID-safe. These challenges raise complex legal and regulatory issues. This article examines one set of these legal and regulatory issues – namely those associated with managing the health and safety risks associated with resuming professional sport in a COVID-19 environment. While much has been written about managing these risks from a medical and scientific perspective, comparatively little has been written about them from a legal or regulatory perspective. This article contributes to filling this gap using Cricket Australia’s response to the pandemic as its case study. Cricket’s complexity of men’s and women’s international and domestic competitions, across different formats, and in every Australian State, provides an interesting and instructive case study from which valuable insights and lessons can be distilled to inform other professional sports faced with solving like problems in the future.

Keywords: Sport, law, regulation, COVID-19, health and safety, public health, negligence, civil liability, labor law, employment law

JEL Classification: I18, K12, K13, K29, K31, K32, Z22