Admission to Marquette men’s basketball’s home arena is now contingent on wearing a mask
Effective Friday, everyone at Fiserv Forum will be required to wear a facemask while in the building. For Marquette men’s basketball fans, this means that this policy goes into effect for Saturday morning’s home game against Creighton.
The policy has been enacted in response to skyrocketing COVID-19 infection rates. Wearing a facemask has long been the simplest and easiest thing that anyone can do to help mitigate the risk of spreading the virus, so I am sure it wasn’t a hard decision for the arena’s management to return to the policy that was in place for Milwaukee Bucks playoff games this past summer.
I’d link to the actual press release from the arena here, but there’s apparently nothing to link to on their actual website. Instead, we turn to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on the topic and their quotes from Fiserv Forum management.
Fiserv Forum general manager Dennis Williams said the arena wants to continue hosting live events and it is “important for us to provide the safest environment to guests coming into the building.”
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“As we see positivity rates decrease and risks change… obviously it’s a fluid situation and we’ll pivot at the right time,” Williams said.
“We want to continue to do live entertainment whether that be basketball or concerts or family shows, and to provide the safest environment for the performers as well as our fans, we thought this was the right decision.”
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“If fans are unwilling to wear masks at Fiserv Forum events, we encourage them not to come,” said Bucks chief communications officer Barry Baum.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been wearing a mask while at Fiserv for all Marquette’s home games so far this season. For multiple familial reasons that I won’t bore you with here, it’s been in my best interest to do my part to protect everyone at Fiserv by wearing my mask. I’m not going to say that I’m pleased to see the arena management do this, because that starts leaning over into “I’m glad that there’s a virus surge” territory, but I’ve long been a proponent of Fiserv requiring proof of vaccination for entry to events. Moving to the masking requirement is at least a step in that direction, so I’ll take what I can get.
Tipoff on New Year’s Day against Creighton is set for 11am Central time.