The Miami Dolphins announced these big changes to their 2020 season because of COVID-19
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to hammer South Florida, the Miami Dolphins announced Thursday that they are barring fans from attending training camp practices and preseason games.
However, the club is still holding out hope that some fans can enter Hard Rock Stadium for the regular season, which begins Sept. 20.
In essence, the club is buying itself a couple of months, in hopes that the conditions improve. The state set a new record for deaths Thursday with 156, and had another 13,965 people test positive for coronavirus — the second-highest one-day total ever in Florida.
“Things are changing week to week and we are still more than two months away from our first scheduled regular season home game so we’ll wait and work with local authorities and make the determination about fans or no fans based on the data as we get closer; with the first priority continuing to be everyone’s health and preventing any spread of the virus,” Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel said. “We’re ready for any scenario and feel very good about the diligence and attention to detail that has gone into creating the safest environment we can if we are able to have fans on September 20th.”
The team began notifying season-ticket holders Thursday of how tickets will be distributed.
“When a stadium capacity is determined, [season-ticket holders] will have first priority to purchase tickets based on their tenure,” the memo read.
All will have the option to roll their 2020 payments into the 2021 season.
But even if it’s safe enough for a smaller-than-capacity number of fans to attend, the game-day experience will be different than in years past.
The club has banned tailgating in 2020, will mandate socially distanced seating clusters, masks will be mandatory when fans aren’t eating or drinking, there will be no paper tickets, the team will add points of entries and exits to help avoid bottlenecks and use cashless purchases for concessions, parking and retail.
Additionally, “all manual faucets, toilet handles, toilets, soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers have been changed to automatic sensors to provide a touchless restroom experience,” the team announced.
Hard Rock Stadium is the first such facility in the world to receive GBAC STAR accreditation from the Global Biorisk Advisory Council, a Division of ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association. The team announced that the stadium completed 20 tasks focused on cleaning, disinfection and infectious disease prevention practices to control risks associated with infectious agents.
The news comes on the same day the NFLPA announced that 72 players have tested positive for COVID-19 as of July 10. That number will surely grow once testing becomes mandatory at the start of training camp, as is expected. The league and the union are still ironing out the details of a testing protocol.
Meanwhile, there are growing concerns about the viability of the Dolphins practicing at all at their Davie training facility until the local coronavirus outbreak abates.
Rookies are scheduled to report Tuesday, but players have been told to stay tuned for possible changes.
Miami Herald sportswriter Barry Jackson contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 11:39 AM.
