Up to four times the number of NFL teams are at risk of having at least one of their games blacked out locally when the season begins next week compared with last year, the latest sign the down economy is taking a toll on even America’s most popular sport, the SportBusiness Journal reports. According to NFL and team sources, the league showed club owners at their meeting in Chicago on Wednesday a video slide with the names of 10 to 12 teams that may not sell out every game. A game that is not sold out within 72 hours of kickoff cannot be broadcast locally. Last year, only three teams — Oakland, Detroit and St. Louis — suffered blackouts. Collectively, those three teams had nine games blacked out, just one more than the eight regular-season games the Jacksonville Jaguars alone are expecting to contribute to this year’s total. The Jaguars have already said that in all likelihood no contest in their eight-game home schedule will sell out this season. The Cincinnati Bengals also could land in the blackout category this year. The team's 44-game streak of selling out home regular season and playoff games is in jeopardy. As of mid-August, the team had several thousand tickets available for each of several home games, Jeff Berding, Bengals director of sales and public affairs, told the Business Courier in an Aug. 21 article. The Bengals failed to sell out either of their two home pre-season games in time to avoid blackouts. And plenty of tickets are left for their opening game, Sept. 13 against Denver. Despite the difficulty that one-third of the league’s teams is having selling out, the NFL is not contemplating amending the blackout rule, which has been in place 36 years. “There is no consideration being given to amending the blackout policy,” wrote NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, in an e-mail. “The policy is important in supporting the ability of the clubs to sell tickets and keeping our games attractive as television programming with large crowds so we can keep all our games on free TV.” NFL on TV The NFL last year saw 96 percent of its games broadcast locally, with only nine of 256 regular-season games being blacked out. Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports and CBS News, said last week that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told him that “he is not going to make any major adjustment to a rule that has lasted a long time just because of a short-term economic problem.” When asked if CBS had concerns about blacked-out games, McManus said, “I don’t think there is any way they are going to change it, so it is pointless to talk to them about it.” The identity of all the teams that were on the list displayed to owners is unclear, though certainly the Jaguars, Lions, Raiders and Rams have challenges. Other teams that have shown signs of struggling to sell out games ahead of the start of this season include San Diego, Miami and Minnesota, though less so now for the Vikings since the signing of Brett Favre. What is also is surprising is the number of teams that historically have had long waiting lists and been locks for sellouts that have not fully moved all their tickets. The New York Jets just last week launched a viral marketing campaign sent to prospective ticket buyers that inserts a fan’s name into a personalized video of players and executives talking about that fan as the team’s prized acquisition. The video pitch is also accessible online, via jointhejets.com. The Dolphins have sent a similar video to potential ticket buyers. The Kansas City Chiefs, another team with deep fan ties, also has not fully sold out all their games. Many teams avoided blackouts in past years by having local sponsors or other companies buy up any remaining inventory, but some of those companies may not be able to afford to do so in these economic times. In addition, in some cases, the number of tickets available is more than just a few thousand. While the prospects for this season may be dampened, historically the league is still in great shape. Only in 2002 did the league first reach the 90 percent mark for games selling out. In the 1970s, when the blackout rule was first established, more than half of the games routinely did not sell out. The league did better in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, on average about six to seven games out of 10 made their way onto local TV. By 2007, the league hit its high water mark of 97 percent, with 13 out of 17 weeks entirely sold out and only seven of the regular season’s 256 games blacked out. http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2009/08/31/daily19.html
the one piece of good news i have is that the Jets won't be blacked out because somehow someway, the NY area won't allow it to happen, whether that means the owners buy up the tickets themselves, or what i dont know, but somehow the Jets and the Giants will end up on tv. If you want to worry about a team, worry about the jags....
I know which bengals home game WON'T be blacked out. When the Steelers enter the Jungle. Another home game...I love it!
I don't understand why a team would allow a blackout. Hey, let's alienate our fanb ase by not letting them see a game in a horrible economy! Rediculous.
blackouts are things of the past, way back in the day they thought that it would make people go to the games because that would be the only way they can watch, unfortunatley the morons that run the nfl don't realize that this method will not work in year 2009
Actually Pittsburgh is one of the cities hit the least by this crappy economy. Nice attempt at bashing though.
This doesnt apply to people who have the Directv Sunday ticket, does it? I figure it would only apply to local games...
I would assume it applies to Directv as well because directv just takes the local broadcast and puts it on their feed. I don't believe the games on directv are different announcers or a different broadcast of the game.
This whole thing is BS. If Goodell really wants to make a good name for himself then he should figure out how to satisfy all 32 clubs with some type of revenue for the unsold tickets AND still show the games on tv at the same time. Football is now America's foremost sport and all games should be on tv.
It doesn't affect Sunday Ticket subscribers if they are outside of the local broadcast area. The OP didn't make it clear whether or not he was in the local market for potentially blacked-out games. Blackout games are still covered by the network with the rights, even if they're not broadcast locally. This was the case even before DirecTV, because games are always broadcast into the away team's home market, and sometimes into national markets if the game is big enough, although blacked-out teams aren't usually very popular to begin with. That said, blackouts are a steaming pile of BS, and if the NFL continues down this road, they will only encourage "alternative" means for enterprising fans to watch the games. Back in the day, that was a pain in the ass, cause it meant having a friend mail you a video tape. These days we have the internet, and the NFL would be wise to remember it. There IS no "local" anymore, when it comes to information.
This is 100% correct. And the NFL would be wise not to lower the value of future TV deals by making it transparently obvious to the football watching public that there are other ways to get a game than just turning on the tube. The NFL hasn't come to grips yet with what the recession is doing to the major networks in terms of declining revenue. The really big money for a new TV deal in 2011 just isn't there at the moment and the situation will likely deteriorate further before then. My best guess is that the days of the huge TV deal backboning everything else are going away, and that the NFL will have to come up with an incredibly diverse range of options to capitalize on the remote entertainment value of their product. Either that or they're going to spend a helluva lot of money trying to enforce the few official existing channels. They're smart, they'll go plan A.
