Terry Pluto’s book, RubberDucks success and hello from Idaho: While We’re Waiting…
September 11, 2014Joe Banner is great on Twitter, but seriously…
September 11, 2014Is there finally pushback on the NFL’s arcane blackout rules? In an op-ed piece in USA Today, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler makes the case that the NFL “doesn’t need government protection to bolster its bottom line.” It is well worth your time to read the whole thing as it attacks the NFL’s opposition.
But the NFL’s blackout policy remains a real concern for fans. During last year’s playoffs, Cincinnati, Green Bay and Indianapolis hadn’t sold out their games 72 hours before kickoff. The only way those games weren’t denied to fans was that local businesses bought blocks of tickets just so the game could be officially “sold out.”
The most egregious case was in Green Bay, where the weather forecast called for a low of minus-15 degrees. Despite decades of unbelievable fan support and loyalty – Green Bay had sold out every regular season game since 1959 – local Packer fans were effectively told that if more people didn’t buy tickets to go freeze, the rest of the community wouldn’t be able to watch the game on TV.
Today, we are blowing the whistle on this anti-fan practice. The NFL should no longer be able to hide behind government rules that punish loyal fans, which is why I am sending to my fellow commissioners a proposal to get rid of the FCC’s blackout rules once and for all. It fulfills a commitment I made in June. We will vote on the proposal on September 30.
The league is loudly opposing this effort. They claim that the system is “working” and the FCC shouldn’t disrupt America’s most popular sports league. Unfortunately, it’s working a lot better for the league and its owners than it is for the fans, who on average pay nearly $500 to take a family of four to a game.
While this might not seem like a giant deal in Cleveland where the Browns have had relative ease selling out games since I can remember, it’s a good sign for the future. The Browns just made improvements to the stadium, which actually cut down the capacity. The NFL continues to sign richer and richer TV deals that we end up paying for in our cable and satellite bills. As the dollars continue to pile up on the TV side directly from our pockets, it only makes sense that the FCC stops artificially boosting yet another of the NFL’s revenue streams with its antiquated policy.
I don’t know if it will threaten NFL game attendance at some point in the future, but better to force the NFL to deal with those realities by lowering ticket prices, or continuing to shrink the sizes of venues than to extort the same people who fund the giant TV deals. None of this is to mention that fans around the entire league pay or at least finance most of the football stadiums themselves.
We’ll see if this comes to pass or if the NFL’s lobbying can keep it from occurring, but regardless, it’s the right thing to do.
21 Comments
Amazing that we’re forced to pay crazy rates to watch a game on TV and then we’re unable to watch it on TV because we’re forced to pay crazy rates to go watch it in the stadium…
#NFLlogic
I’m no legal scholar and I’m certainly no fan of the NFL’s greed and arrogance, but I’m having trouble finding justification for the government mandating that the NFL give away its product for free if there are unsold seats.
This appears to be one of those populist politician schemes that pop up during campaign season.
Is this really any of the government’s business?
When I was a teenager I cared but now after the last 15 years away black outs or even prospective black outs don’t even faze me!
The government is the one that put the rule in place, so they are the one to remove it now that it is out-dated.
Wait a minute, mg. Are you saying that the government ordered the NFL to black out any games that were not sold out? Because it sounds like that’s what you’re saying.
Is there anything worse than the commercial-kickoff-commercial sequence? It’s soul-crushing. It’s probably one of the greatest atrocities of the modern era.
No, the NFL begged the FCC to create blackout rules to protect the NFL gate $$$ in the 1970s. But, once created, the FCC also must be the ones to remove them.
yes, the becoming more common sequence of:
TD-review commercial break, extra-point, commercial, kickoff, commercial
it’s a big reason why I don’t start watching games until 45min after kickoff.
I wish I could do that. We are usually watching the Browns online via that crappy Sunday Ticket feed. It freezes up about every 5 minutes and forces you to reconnect to the game.
I still don’t get it, compadre. Why should the NFL have to beg the FCC to let them black out games? The public has no constitutional right to televised football.
Also, blackouts go back way farther than the ’70s. I don’t think any home games were ever shown locally in the ’50s and ’60s. The ’64 championship game was blacked out in Cleveland.
I’m just not seeing the legal justification here. It seems a bit like seizure of private property. I guess they could always try to argue eminent domain, but that’s a pretty big stretch.
Ugh, that is terrible. I don’t watch the Browns until Monday morning on the NFL-Replay and it has had no such issues.
Oh man, I am way too impatient to wait a whole day to watch the Browns lose. I need to watch them lose in real time so I can commiserate with others on Twitter.
I’m not 100% certain on how/why or the legal justifications either, but it is what the FCC did (strengthened in the 70s at least):
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/updating-old-policies-pioneering-new-ones
I’d be 100% in favor of ads on the uniforms if it got rid of half of the commercials. There’s nothing worse than being in the stadium with both teams standing on the playing field waiting for the TV time-out to end. At least at home, I can switch to another game or TV show…In the stadium it’s BRUTAL.
Ok, then we limit the blackout removal to cities where the stadium was built wholly without taxpayer money. Simple and fair.
reason number 314159265359 why I don’t do Twitter or Facebook 🙂
There is also that little tax-exempt non-profit status that the NFL currently has going for it.
Oh yeah, that too. Perhaps my favorite “non-profit” of them all.
It’s not free. See those giant TV deals.
Yo no comprendo.
Is it an issue that since they already “sold” the game to the network, they should not be able to tell the network where it can/cannot show the game?