Brendan O'Brien: Sponsors and TV companies scrambling to comb through contracts

That screeching sound we all heard last month was the brakes being pulled on the $500bn (€462bn) global sports industry. Almost overnight, a sector whose value seemed to be on a one-way ticket skywards was brought plummeting back down to earth and no corner of the planet has been able to find a bunker deep enough to escape the reverberations.

A 2010 Indecon report commissioned by what was at the time the Irish Sports Council, found that sport in Ireland generated €1.9bn in household spending every year between club subscriptions, gate receipts, clothing and footwear, and sport-related travel.