UK Government Halts Plans for Fans to Return to Football Matches

The UK government is pausing plans to allow limited numbers of fans back into football matches and other live sports events, which had been the intention from 1 October.

It comes as the country’s virus threat assessment is upgraded from level three to level four, which means it is now ‘high or rising exponentially’ amid an increasing number of daily cases.

From a low in July following the first devastating wave in March, April and May, the risk of a damaging second wave is rising unless decisive action is taken.

As many as 4,368 cases were recorded on Monday alone and it has been warned by the government’s scientific adviser that by the middle of October there could be 50,000 per day without intervention. Testing facilities are already struggling to cope with the demand.

Football fans had circled 1 October on calendars because it was the date when it was hoped they could start returning to games in stadiums, having been forced to stay away since March.

A handful of test events have already been completed in recent weeks, with 2,500 people attending a pre-season game between Brighton and Chelsea in late August, and up to another 1,000 at the WSL match between Arsenal and West Ham earlier this month.

However, speaking on BBC Breakfast, government minister Michael Gove confirmed the plans to take that any further from next month will now have to be put on hold.

“We were looking at a staged programme of more people returning – it wasn't going to be the case that we were going to have stadiums thronged with fans,” Gove commented.

“We're looking at how we can, for the moment, pause that programme, but what we do want to do is to make sure that, as and when circumstances allow, get more people back.

“The virus is less likely to spread outdoors than indoors but again it's in the nature of major sporting events that there's a lot of mingling.”

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