The Biggest Sporting Events This Year

After a disastrous 2020, sporting events have made a massive comeback. Many of these events have been reopened to the public, providing the industry with a much-needed boost to make up for the lockdowns and various other restrictions that occurred due to COVID-19. 

On-site PCR testing laboratories have played a key role in this return by ensuring the safety of players, employees and spectators as sporting events reopen to the public. Cignpost Diagnostics’ has been hard at work creating safe environments at these events, making the testing process fast, easy and efficient. Let’s look at some of the incredible sporting events that have returned – or will soon be returning – and how our state of the art testing facilities have helped make this possible.

Commonwealth Games

The Commonwealth Games were hosted in Birmingham in 2022. The first Commonwealth Games (known then as the British Empire Games) were hosted in 1930 and took place in Ontario, Canada. Eleven countries in total participated, including Australia, Canada, England, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Wales. Today, teams from 72 countries across the globe have the opportunity to participate in various competitive events for athletics, basketball, diving, gymnastics, hockey, rugby, and many more popular and niche sports. 

One unique feature of the Commonwealth Games is because all the participating countries are former British territories, all the athletes can converse with one another in a common language, English. For this reason, the Games are often referred to as the “Friendly Games”. According to Birmingham Games CEO Ian Reid, the event sold 1.2 million tickets by the middle of July 2022, just a few days before the event started. With more than eight decades of history behind it, the Commonwealth Games is regarded as a great opportunity to spot future talent.

With around 5,000 athletes in participation, event organisers were able to successfully keep both athletes and officials safe with mandatory PCR testing before travelling to Birmingham and then another upon arrival. Other measures included social distancing, increasing ventilation, minimising physical contact, avoiding staying for “unnecessarily long periods of time in crowded areas,” and wearing masks in indoor settings while in close proximity to athletes. A security bubble was set up around the athletes’ village, the venues, and transport during the Games. While the organising committee considered the event as low risk after completing the World Health Organisations (WHO) mass gathering risk assessment, the insistence of testing created a secure environment for all involved.

Six Nations Championship

An event of major importance for world rugby was the Six Nations 2022 championship tournament. If you’re from England, rugby in 2022 will certainly include attending or watching this competition. This event is the oldest international rugby tournament in the world, with the first tournament taking place back in 1883. Teams from England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales come together to compete in this exciting tournament.

Approximately 65,000 people attended each match in this thrilling event, bringing the total number of spectators to approximately 964,000. According to France Télévisions Publicité, about 34 million French residents tuned in to watch the tournament, with millions more likely tuning in from across the world. 

To make events of this magnitude possible, a rigorous testing regime, such as the one implemented by Cignpost to the New Zealand All Blacks during their autumn European Tour, is needed to keep teams safe. November 2021 marked the teams first return to Europe in three years, covering four countries in four weeks. Cignpost provided COVID-19 testing every three days to players, coaches, managers and executives, administering a total of  207 PCR tests and 462 Lateral Flow tests to ensure the safety of the team and a 100% success rate with 0 COVID-19 outbreaks.

The Masters

The Masters is one of four men’s golf majors in 2022 (the other three being The Open Championship, The PGA Tournament, and the U.S. Open). It takes place at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia in the US, with the first event being played back in 1934. This prestigious tournament has a number of long-running traditions, including the awarding (and re-awarding) of a green jacket to winners of the event. It’s famed for the exclusive pre-tournament dinner where the guest list consists only of previous winners. 

Depending on the source, it’s estimated that anywhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people watched golf at the Masters in 2022. American broadcasting company CBS reported that the final-round broadcast averaged 10.173 million viewers for the Masters in 2022. Whether this includes international viewers is not clear, but regardless, a lot of people tune in for this important golf tournament.

While not directly involved with The Masters, there is no doubt that strict protocol and adequate testing were essential in the success of this event. This can be seen in our involvement with the DP World Tour, where we were able to administer over 50,000 tests in 21 countries to ensure there were no COVID-19 outbreaks. Cignpost continues to provide testing services to the Tour, while offering a full range of diagnostic and healthcare solutions to ensure players remain in peak conditions throughout the event.

Tour de France

If you’re a fan of competitive cycling, there’s one event that you simply cannot miss: The Tour de France. With more than 100 years of history behind the event, this is undoubtedly the premier cycling event to watch as it’s not only the largest competitive cycling event, it is also one of the toughest, with riders needing to complete roughly 3,500 km over 23 days.

Trying to sell tickets to an event of this magnitude would be impossible due to the sheer distance that it covers, meaning that spectators can watch for free. So the event draws in millions of people (even in 2022’s unusual heat) who all line up along the route to watch the cyclists whizz by. Meanwhile, many more people enjoy the action from the comfort of their homes. Statista reported in its graph “Number of TV viewers of the Tour de France in 2021, by region” that 150 million people in Europe alone watch this iconic race, while Bicycling.com reports that the organisers believe approximately 3.5 billion people around the world tune in to watch.
Cignpost Diagnostics became an essential part of Canyon dhb SunGod on their UCI Europe tour in 2021 by creating a network of mobile testing sites across the UK for fast and reliable testing, allowing the riders to fit tests into their training schedules to ensure peace of mind.

Wimbledon

Wimbledon may not have the same number of attendees or viewers at home as the FIFA World Cup, but there’s no doubt that it’s one of the most prestigious tennis events to watch in 2022. The first championship was held in 1877, and, apart from the disruptions caused by the First and Second World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic, the event has been held every year since, with Cignpost Diagnostics supporting the 2021 tournament through mobile on-site testing.

With over 475,000 people in attendance at Wimbledon 2022 and tens of millions of people watching from home (the BBC announced that 53.8 million people watched the tournament using streaming services), it’s clear that people around the world look forward to this important event on the tennis calendar.

Events to look out for

FIFA World Cup 2022

Even if you don’t follow football, you’ll still know that the FIFA World Cup is the premier event for one of the world’s most popular sports. Every four years, billions of people (including England football fans) tune in to watch some of the best players from around the globe battle it out on the football pitch. To put things into perspective, over 3.5 billion people tuned into the 2018 FIFA World Cup, but FIFA expects that number to be even higher this year, with its estimates putting viewership at an incredible five billion!

This year’s showdown in Qatar is also expected to be one for the history books in regards to attendance, as 1.8 million of the two million tickets that are available to the public have already been sold. An estimated three million people will attend the matches, with the remaining space reserved for the FIFA world body and event sponsors. Until this tournament starts in November, we at least have the UEFA Nations League 2022 to keep us entertained.

Because of the sheer number of fans expected to attend, the importance of ventilation at the stadiums is not to be understated. FIFA is working closely with local authorities to implement rules and health and sanitary protocols to safeguard the health of everyone in attendance.

Bespoke COVID-19 testing solutions for the sports industry

If you’re organising a sporting event in the UK and would like to provide COVID-19 testing to players, visitors, and staff, Cignpost Diagnostics can assist. We’ve partnered with a number of teams to provide rapid, accurate and easily accessible COVID-19 PCR tests.

If you’d like to bulk buy COVID tests, we can deliver Antigen Lateral Flow test kits to your door. We can also ensure that your environment is safer by providing mobile COVID-19 laboratories, as well as other COVID-19 testing services. We have worked with numerous major global organisations in the past, including the PGA European Tour, Netflix, and the BBC. Learn more about how our sports health test service can help you host a safer sporting event.
Contact us to find out more about our services.