First Minister Mark Drakeford has explained why Welsh sporting fans will be able to watch matches on TV in a pub after Christmas, but won’t actually be able to attend fixtures within stadiums.
The Welsh Government announced on Tuesday that all sporting matches in Wales from Boxing Day would be played behind closed doors in an effort to stop the rising number of Omicron variant cases.
The news came as a significant blow to Wales’ professional and grassroots sporting outfits – with one of the busiest times of the year now set to be hindered without the revenue that ticket sales would bring. The grassroots game in Wales has been appeased slightly by Wednesday’s announcement that up to 50 spectators can now attend team sport fixtures from Boxing Day, but the professional sides will still be running out to empty stadiums.
While the Welsh Government has moved to put in place tougher restrictions on pubs, restaurants and other areas of hospitality, the fact remains that Welsh sporting fans who are not allowed to attend matches in person are still able to watch it on TV in pubs.
As such, the question was put to Mark Drakeford why crowds were not reduced in the first instance – as has been the case in Scotland – rather than immediately moving to a blanket ban on spectators.
“It is true that [in] Scotland 500 people are allowed to go see a match,” he said.
“But that effectively means those matches won’t go ahead with a crowd. 500 people would go nowhere near to making those commercially sustainable for clubs.
“There are a number of points in that question. I think rugby and football clubs have worked very hard to keep things safe during the Delta period.
“But we are concerned not by how people behave at the ground, but the various other pinch points.
“How people travel to them, how people come and go from them, how people act in hospitality around them. There are risks there that we do not need to run. Given there will be thousands of cases by the time we get after Christmas, those risks are absolutely real.
“Those risks are very different if you are in a venue with far, far fewer people and with all the additional protections we have announced today.
“Yes, you will be able to be in a pub with the new protections in place and watch a game on television, but you won’t be there with 21,000 other people sharing the same space with you, trying to get in and out of the ground at the same time.
“The circumstances are not comparable in that way and that’s why we’ve treated them differently in the regulations I have announced today.”