The gloomy outlook for the college football season sends sportsbook operators' stock price into the ground.
College Football Season Now In Doubt
According to reports from Sports Illustrated's College Football columnists, Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde, the upcoming college football season is in serious doubts over concerns relating to the coronavirus.
The heads of all Power 5 conferences met over the weekend and are expected to come to the conclusion of postponing all fall sports, including College Football until 2021. One conference commissioner told Sports Illustrated, “I think all of us will be meeting with our boards in the coming days. We have work to do that is no fun.”
According to Dellenger and Forde, the Big Ten conference is expected to be the first to cancel the 2020 fall season with the Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, and ACC all coming to the same conclusion by the end of the week. Presidents and Chancellors of schools in the SEC called an impromptu meeting for Monday afternoon.
From the student-athlete perspective, college football players from all five of the major conferences had a collective push on social media to form a college football players union. Led by Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, college football players started posting the same graphic on social media which called for establishing a players’ union while using the hashtag WeAreUnited and WeWantToPlay.
As a result of the pending cancelation, several gaming operators' stocks saw a significant decline in their share price. DraftKings and Penn National stock both fell more than 7% on Monday.
MGM Gets $1 Billion Investment
MGM Resorts International got a one billion influx of cash by way of 59 million shares being purchased by IAC /Interactive Corporation. IAC chairman and media mogul Barry Diller now owns 12% of the casino, gaming and hotel giant.
Regarding the purchase, Diller, who founded Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting, said in a statement.
“What initially attracted us to MGM, besides its leadership in leisure, hospitality, and gaming was an area that currently comprises a tiny portion of its revenue – online gaming.”
Diller went on to say, "there is a digital-first opportunity within MGM Resorts’ already impressive offline businesses, and with our experience, we hope we can strongly contribute to the growth of online gaming,”
Daily Coronavirus and Business Update
There are over 19.9 million cases of the virus worldwide, with over 732,000 deaths. According to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. has surpassed 5 million cases with over 163,000 deaths.
According to the COVID-19 Tracking Project, there were 51,291 new cases reported Sunday. 711,984 new tests were reported. And 616 deaths were reported yesterday.
TikTok is preparing to file a federal lawsuit as soon as Tuesday against President Trump’s executive order banning the service in the continental United States, arguing it is unconstitutional.
A person familiar with the company’s plans told NPR on Monday that the company, which is owned by ByteDance, will file the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, where TikTok's American operations are based. The lawsuit will argue that President Trump's action is unconstitutional because it failed to give the company a chance to respond. It will also allege that the administration's national security justification for the order is baseless. Under the executive order issued last week, “any transaction” between a U.S. citizen and TikTok's Beijing-based parent company will be outlawed in 45 days for national security reasons. TikTok officials see the executive order as essentially a pressure campaign, a way of forcing an American company to move quickly to acquire the app's U.S. assets.