The “Last Week Tonight” host on Sunday broke down the difficulty of resuming professional sports during the coronavirus pandemic and the emptiness felt by fans everywhere.
“Look, I will own the fact I really want sports to come back,” Oliver said on his HBO show, in the video above. “There is no doubt that they have the ability to inspire. One of the things that sport does best is to bring people together in times of crisis, like when the Yankees resumed playing after 9/11.
“Unfortunately though, bringing people together is the exact thing that we should not be doing right now. And while sport was genuinely helpful at the start of this crisis in showing us how serious this virus was, if it comes back too soon, and irresponsibly, it won’t be an inspiration — it’ll be a cautionary tale.”
So, Oliver offered a temporary solution that involved a “schedule of heart-pounding events” and “no human contact”: marble racing.
He got on a roll, touting YouTube channel Jelle’s Marble Runs, which is gaining surprisingly large audiences but losing money from its Marble League. As a solution, Oliver stepped up to sponsor the upcoming Marble League tournament.
As his new hype video declares: “This one’s for all the marbles.”
And for charity, the marble winners will generate a $5,000 donation in their name to a food bank, and $20,000 will go to the International Rescue Committee on behalf of the overall champion.
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