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Less than four weeks away marks the official start of football Sunday. Many sports fans will be gathered around the television with friends and wonderful food as if it was a Super Bowl party. Especially after the threat of possibly not having a football season, fans are going to be pulling out all of the stops to make it a memorable season. Although fans are excited about the upcoming season, there are still some concerns that could put a damper on these parties. According to CBS SPORTS.com, blackout games are still a problem and there are not going away. Blackout is a term that is associated with broadcasting or televising a certain sport event or program. Each franchise has a certain amount of tickets to sell in order for their market (city) to see the game. If those tickets are not sold by a particular time (72 hours), the game will not be televised for no one to see from a certain point (75 mile radius). However, this depends on if the game is broadcasted on a Sunday. If the game is nationally televised on a cable network, then the game is blackout to customers in that affected markets.

The National Football League which many critics say these procedures hurts teams has set these guidelines. For example, the Jacksonville Jaguars who are no strangers to blackout games experienced all but one regular season game blackout in 2009. This broadcasting issue is very serious and can drastically affect the revenue of the league as well as franchises. Therefore, during that same season, the NFL tried to soften the blackout policy by providing free online access of the blackout games, which are available after the game has been played. Another decision was to not subject red zone to blackouts, this affects individuals with particular cable services. After the lockout, the league allowed all teams like the Jaguars to use 10,000 complementary tickets for preseason games to get to the blackout number because of the short selling season following the lockout. Once the official season begins the policy will no longer be in effect. However, there have been some whispers about the NFL allowing clubs to cover seats to avoid TV blackouts. Of course there are pros and a cons for this change but the league has made this kind of exception for variety of teams. The pro in this decision would allow for the teams who are struggling to sells tickets the ability to showcase their players talent in hopes of increasing ticket sales. The downfall might affect personal seat license holders and highly discounted tickets with season ticket holders.

There is no win-win situation about the issue of blackout games. In my opinion it is more than just the league concerns in dealing with this issue. It is really up to the owners and team’s marketing department to create ways in soliciting fans to come to games. Even though other can see the game in different cities, it still hurts the view rating of the broadcasting networks. Which eventually affects the revenue of the franchise and the players. Therefore, teams need to research what exactly it is that stops consumers for purchasing tickets and work around the those issues. In the beginning they may suffer a little revenue loss but nothing worse than not having a seat purchase at all.

-The Sportsnista

Picture Reference:

Free-extras.com. Jacksonville Jaguars Stadium Pictures and Images. Retrieved August 25, 2011 from http://free-extras.com/images/jacksonville_jaguars_stadium-9171.htm

Livesportsgamesonline.com. Watch Live Sports Games Online Including Pay Per View Events and More. Retrieved August 25, 2011 from http://www.livesportsgamesonline.com/