Coronavirus hits hard at sports leagues

With the world's governments scrambling to contain the coronavirus and the whole of Italy on lockdown as citizens quarantine themselves, the world of sports has taken a hard hit as large crowds and gatherings are being discouraged out of fear of the spread of the virus.

Here is a rundown of what sports are being affected.

FOOTBALL

-- UEFA has postponed all Champions League and Europa League matches due to take place next week.

-- All elite soccer matches in England, including the Premier League, were suspended until April 4.

-- France's professional football league (LFP) is poised to cancel Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 matches scheduled for this weekend.

-- Spanish club Real Madrid's players were put in quarantine as La Liga announced Spain's top two divisions will be suspended for at least two weeks. A member of Real's basketball squad tested positive for the virus leading to its senior football team being put in quarantine.

-- UEFA will hold a crisis meeting next Tuesday with representatives from all 55 national associations and club and player bodies about Euro 2020 and the ongoing Champions League and Europa League.

-- In Italy, the hardest-hit European country with 1,016 deaths from COVID-19, all sporting events including Serie A have been suspended until April 3.

-- On Wednesday Juventus defender Daniele Rugani became the first Serie A footballer to test positive for the virus, with Sampdoria forward Manolo Gabbiadini announcing that he had contracted the virus on Thursday.

-- The second leg of Juve's Champions League last 16 tie with Lyon was postponed on Wednesday, as was Manchester City v Real Madrid.

-- Barcelona v Napoli and Bayern Munich v Chelsea will be played behind closed doors as it stands.

-- France's Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 will have no fans for at least the next two weeks.

-- Arsenal players have been put in quarantine after coming into contact with the owner of Greek club Olympiakos, who tested positive.

-- German Bundesliga teams have begun to close their stadiums to fans, with this weekend's matches set to be played in front of empty stands.

-- The Netherlands' Eredivisie has been suspended until March 31.

-- Three UEFA Europa League games on Thursday including Manchester United away to LASK Linz will have no fans, while the ties between Inter Milan and Getafe and Roma and Sevilla have been postponed.

-- The Netherlands' friendly against Spain set for March 29 cancelled. The United States has called off friendlies against the Dutch on March 26 and Wales (March 30).

-- International friendlies to be played behind closed doors include France v Ukraine and Germany v Italy.

-- The start of Japan's J-League was postponed till mid-March while China suspended all domestic football and shelved indefinitely the top-flight Super League season.

-- The French League Cup final between Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon has been called off, with no new date yet fixed, as has the Spanish Copa del Rey final between Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao.

-- A Euro 2020 warm-up tournament in Qatar featuring Portugal, Belgium, Croatia and Switzerland, has been cancelled.

-- The FIFA Congress, due to take place in Addis Ababa on June 5, was pushed back to September 18.

TENNIS

-- The ATP has suspended its tour for six weeks "due to escalating health and safety issues".

-- The ATP and WTA Miami Open was called off after Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez declared a state of emergency over the outbreak.

-- The prestigious ATP and WTA Indian Wells tournament was cancelled, the first major sports event in the US to be shelved because of the outbreak.

-- The inaugural Fed Cup Finals scheduled for next month in Budapest were postponed.

TABLE TENNIS

-- The world championships in South Korea, were pushed back provisionally from March to June.

RUGBY UNION

-- The Six Nations match between Italy and England in Rome on Saturday as well as the Ireland v Italy duel in Dublin on March 7 were postponed.

-- Title challengers France's final game against Ireland, also scheduled for Saturday, was also put off until October.

-- Sevens World Series tournaments in Hong Kong on April 3-5 and Singapore the following weekend will now be played in October.

MOTORSPORT

-- Formula One will call off the Bahrain and Vietnamese Grands Prix after the cancellation of Sunday's Australian season-opener due to the coronavirus outbreak

-- Bahrain's Formula One Grand Prix on March 20-22 will be held without spectators.

-- The Chinese Grand Prix, which was set for April 19 in Shanghai, has been postponed.

-- In motorcycling, the season-opening Qatar MotoGP was cancelled, along with the Thailand MotoGP on March 22 (postponed until October 4). On Tuesday the Grand Prix of the Americas at Austin was rescheduled from April to November, while the MotoGP race in Argentina was also put on hold.

-- Formula E indefinitely postponed the Rome E-Prix, which was due to be held on April 4.

BASKETBALL

-- NBA suspended the season after Utah Jazz's Rudy Gobert tested positive for the new coronavirus. ESPN reported that his teammate Donovan Mitchell has also tested positive. LeBron James and Stephen Curry have called on the league to cancel the season after a "rough" 2020.

-- NCAA 'March Madness' to also be closed to general public.

CYCLING

-- The spring classic Milan-San Remo, scheduled for March 21, was postponed, having only previously been cancelled three times since the inaugural edition in 1907.

-- The Strade Bianchi, the first big race of the Italian cycling season set for last Saturday, was also cancelled along with the multi-day Tirreno-Adriatico.

-- This month's Tour of Catalonia has been postponed, organisers announced on Thursday.

TOKYO OLYMPICS

-- World Athletics Sebastian Coe said the 2020 Tokyo Games will go ahead. Tokyo city governor Yuriko Koike said cancelling the Olympics is "unthinkable". The Olympics take place from July 24-August 9.

-- US President Donald Trump suggested the Olympics could be postponed for a year. "I like that better than I like having empty stadiums," he said.

-- Spectators were absent as the Olympic flame was lit in ancient Olympia.

GOLF

-- Fans will be banned from attending PGA Tour events unril after next month's Texas Open, commissioner Jay Monahan said Thursday.

-- European Tour chiefs postponed the Maybank Championship in Malaysia and the China Open in Shenzhen -- both set for April.

-- The US LPGA Tour cancelled all three of its lucrative early-season events in Asia with a combined prize purse of more than $5 million.

-- The Indian Open in New Delhi, set for March 19-22, was postponed on Wednesday.

CRICKET

-- The start of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament, scheduled for March 29, has been postponed until April 15.

-- Australia's three-match one-day series against New Zealand in Sydney and Hobart is being held without fans.

-- The cricket boards of India and South Africa agreed to reschedule the ongoing three-match one-day international series to a later date. The first match on March 12 was washed out.

-- England's two-match test series in Sri Lanka that was scheduled to start on March 19 has been postponed.

-- Pakistan cricket authorities announced plans to close public access to a series of upcoming domestic league matches in Karachi.

ATHLETICS

-- The World Indoor Championships, scheduled for Nanjing from March 13-15, were postponed until next year.

-- The Paris Marathon, scheduled for April 5 with 60,000 registered runners, was postponed until October 18.

-- The Barcelona Marathon, which was scheduled for March 15 with 17,000 runners, was postponed until October.

ALPINE SKIING

-- Norway's Aleksander Kilde won alpine skiing's men's World Cup title after the final races of the season at Kranjska Gora at the weekend were scrapped due to the coronavirus threat

-- The World Cup finals, scheduled for Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy between March 16-22, were cancelled.

-- This weekend's three women's races in Are were scrapped, crowning Federica Brignone as the overall champion.

FIGURE SKATING

-- World championships, scheduled for Montreal next week, were cancelled.

WINTER SPORTS

-- The International skiing federation cancelled the final races of the men's Alpine skiing.

-- The World Cup finals in Cortina were canceled along with the last three women's races in Are.

-- The women's world ice hockey championships in Canada were cancelled.

-- The Speed skating world championships in Seoul have been postponed until at least October.

-- The March 16-22 world figure skating championships in Montreal were cancelled.

BASEBALL

-- Japan's domestic baseball season, originally set to open on March 10, was postponed.

-- The final qualification tournament in Taiwan for the Olympics was put back from April to June 17-21, while the March 22-26 qualification event in Arizona was postponed.

ICE HOCKEY

-- The NHL commissioner Gary Bettman halted the competition on Thursday three weeks before the scheduled conclusion of the 2019-20 regular season.

-- The Women's World Ice Hockey Championships, set for Halifax and Truro in Nova Scotia for March 31 to April 10, were cancelled.

JUDO

-- The International Judo Federation canceled all Olympic qualification events through to the end of April.

GYMNASTICS

-- The All-Around World Cup (Stuttgart; March 20-22) was cancelled.

ROWING

-- Two World Rowing Cups and the European Olympic Qualification Regatta, all scheduled for Italy, were cancelled