MIAMI — Lower player salaries, delayed construction of new arenas and "weeding out" of struggling companies may loom as the next phase of how the recession impacts the sports and entertainment world, a panel of industry executives and athletes cautioned Wednesday.

Speaking at the IMG World Congress of Sports, the group agreed that even in these times, well-managed companies should thrive. Still, they warned the impact of the global financial crunch may not be apparent in sports for some time — perhaps another year or more.

"We're facing the greatest economic challenge of all of our lifetimes," said Tim Leiweke, president and CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which oversees arenas including the Staples Center in Los Angeles. "We have never seen anything like this and I pray that we never see anything like this again. And if you look at our industry, sports in particular ... we have to reinvent ourselves."

The panel — which also included NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, NASCAR CEO Brian France, retired basketball star Alonzo Mourning, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and IMG president George Pyne — offered a sobering forecast of how that reinvention may happen.

"It's so difficult out there. They just took the double cheeseburger off the Dollar Menu at McDonald's," Plank said. "That'll give you a sense of what the economy is like."

While seeming optimistic for an eventual turnaround and insisting they believe that sports and the economy will provide "therapy" for a financially ailing public, the panel also warned that the worst may still be ahead.

Many big-money deals that shape the sports world, like collective bargaining agreements between leagues and their various player unions, were made long before the recession gripped the world's marketplace.

And since many CBAs will need to be re-negotiated in the next 1-2 years, sports could be on the cusp of some major change.

"We're going to have inflation, it's going to be bad and we're going to have to deal with that at some point or another," Leiweke said. "We're going to pay a price for what we're going through right now and bailing everyone out. So I think long-term, there's going to need to be adjustments based the amount of money earned compared to the amount of money paid."

The five biggest pro sports in North America — baseball, football, basketball, hockey and NASCAR — have taken at least some sort of hit from the economic downturn in recent months. The NFL reduced its work force by 169 people, the U.S. Olympic Committee recently lost 54 employees, the NBA and Major League Baseball's Internet division needed to go the layoff route last year. By some estimates, as many as 600 people who worked on NASCAR teams last year aren't trackside in 2009.

Some hockey teams are struggling as well, but Bettman said the overall picture for the NHL is strong.

The NHL, Bettman said, will see record revenues and attendance for the fourth straight year since the league resumed play following the lockout — which, he suggested, made the league stronger before the economy soured.

"We were used to operating in adverse times," Bettman said.