The bad news is that, in addition to all the other weighty issues they currently have on their plate, they should probably devote some serious thought to the evolution of the advertising/sponsorship market, one of their main income generators, and how COVID-19 is shaping trends.

The good news, to resort to a phrase dearly beloved by masters of the PowerPoint presentation, is that this represents an opportunity as well as a challenge for those who get their reactions right.

The key piece of information that the sports industry (and, frankly, most others) would do well to reflect on in this regard was contained in a global mid-year forecast published this month by GroupM, a media agency.

This was that, "During 2020, digital advertising will have a 52 per cent share of media captured here, up from 48 per cent in 2019 and 44 per cent in 2018".

This historic moment, when spending on digital platforms such as search engines and social media, for the first time outstrips spending on traditional media, has of course been coming for some time.

But it appears to have been speeded up significantly by behavioural changes linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to one industry figure quoted in the Financial Times article that drew my attention to the new forecast, "In the last three months we have seen three years’ worth of digital acceleration".

So how should sport react?

The first advice might well take the form of the two-word injunction that Lance Corporal Jones is always so quick to utter but so incapable of executing in the World War II sitcom Dad’s Army: Don’t panic.

These are profoundly strange times; the advertising industry, in common with many others, is experiencing a steep downturn, with global advertising revenue expected to decline by 7 per cent in 2020 to $540 billion (£427 billion/€470 billion), according to another new forecast produced by Magna.

Digital advertising’s unexpectedly rapid new market-share gains have materialised not because that sector of the market is growing even more strongly, but because digital has been affected much less severely by COVID-related phenomena than traditional media.

The smart response might be to maintain a largely watching brief until it becomes plain whether the same patterns will manifest once growth returns.

Magna currently predicts just over 6 per cent growth in 2021, although this looks to be on the assumption that rescheduled sports events such as the Tokyo Olympics and European football championships can indeed proceed on their revised dates; this cannot, of course, for the moment be guaranteed.

The Magna report’s author, Vincent Létang, states, moreover, that "beyond the short-term V-shaped recession/recovery impact on the economy and the advertising market, the COVID crisis will have global and long-term effects on society, business models, consumption habits, mobility and media usage, all factors pointing to a more subdued economic growth and advertising spend than previously forecast for the 2022-24 period”.

Even so, the report predicts growth of 3.5 per cent a year for those three years – a clip, should it materialise, which ought to be enough to ensure that the sponsorship boom enjoyed in recent years by sport in general and the Olympic Movement in particular does not peter out entirely.

Forging an association with top-class athletes or sports bodies is a good way for businesses to build their brands.

Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, buyers of advertising seem to have lost some of their appetite for this during the crisis, with companies said to be focusing rather on messages and techniques designed to augment purchases while many consumers have been in lockdown.

So, while following Lance Corporal Jones’s advice, sport must also be hoping that prospective sponsors recover their appetite for strategic, brand-building campaigns sooner rather than later.

Having said all that, digital advertising, with the data-gathering capability it offers, has been gaining share ever since it emerged.

Sports leaders should have been factoring this simple fact of life into their thinking on how to offer best value-for-money to clients for several years; but they might now want to hurry their plans along a little bit.

GroupM estimates that “digital extensions”, by which it means digital advertising associated with traditional media, may add up to as much as $31 billion (£24.5 billion/€27 billion) this year.

This is one area where sport might profitably ensure it is offering sponsors, some of whom will be particularly hard-pressed at the moment, as much bang as it possibly can for their buck.

Among pure digital formats, digital video is especially well-suited to sport.

It has also proved notably resilient in the face of the downturn, with Magna forecasting growth of 10 per cent in the massive United States market even this year.

That is another area, you feel, which sports bodies could usefully prioritise if they have not done so already.

And with most commentators seemingly thinking that the lockdown-fuelled online shopping boom is unlikely to go into reverse when High Streets and out-of-town malls return to normal, sports bodies would be well-advised to check that their online merchandise proposition is as compelling as possible.

With the pandemic still playing havoc with sport’s ability to deliver its core product to consumers, the temptation may be to batten down the hatches, slash costs temporarily to the bone and wait out the storm.

But with digitisation transforming media and sponsorship/advertising at dizzying speed, a better approach would be to use this unexpected but unavoidable hiatus to try to ensure that these two geese, fast-evolving as they may be, continue to lay golden eggs for the sports industry far into the future.