Switched from Directv back to cable so no longer get Sunday Ticket. Anyone know if the local team is blacked out (Tampa Bays owners saying games might be blacked out this year) do they replace the game with another or do they just show Heidi or something?
Hard to predict blackouts when tickets have not even been sold yet, let alone schedule released. Unless they base their assumptions on season ticket sales. NY games hardly ever blacked out so I am not sure what happens.
I am sure it was a ploy to pick up some sales but they only have about 40,000 season ticket holders out of 68,000+ seats. I usually head out to watch the games anyway but was curious what does happen since I have never had to deal with it in NY or here.
I remember the year the Phins plays the Ravens in the playoffs, the game did not sell out in Miami. I was living in Boca at the time, and there was no game on CBS. I only got to see one Wild Card game that day. Blackout policies Since 1973, the NFL has maintained a blackout policy that states that a home game cannot be televised locally if it is not sold out within 72 hours prior to its start time. Prior to 1973, all games were blacked out in their city of origin regardless of whether they were sold out. This policy, dating back to the NFL's emerging years on television, resulted in home-city blackouts that even extended to championship games. For instance, the 1958 "Greatest Game Ever Played" between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was not available on TV to New York fans despite the fact that tickets were sold out. Similarly, all Super Bowl games prior to Super Bowl VII were blacked out in the host city's market. Although that policy was successfully defended in court numerous times, Congress passed legislation requiring the NFL to impose the 72-hour deadline (see above). The league will sometimes extend this deadline to 48 hours if there are only a few thousand tickets left unsold; much more rarely, they will occasionally extend this to 24 hours before kickoff in special cases. Alternatively, some NFL teams have arrangements with local TV stations or businesses to buy up unsold tickets. Tickets in premium "club" sections have been excluded from the blackout rule in past years, as have tickets returned by the visiting team. The Jacksonville Jaguars have even gone further and closed off a number of sections at their home Jacksonville Municipal Stadium to reduce the number of tickets they would need to sell (Jacksonville Municipal Stadium is one of the largest in the NFL, as it was built to also accommodate the annual Florida-Georgia game and the Gator Bowl, but Jacksonville is one of the smallest markets in the league). However, the NFL requires that this be done for every home game (including any home playoff games) in a given season if a team elects such an option, so that they can't try to sell out the entire stadium only when they expect to be able to do so. On occasion, teams have had their entire home schedule blacked out since not one home game sold out. Blackout radius The NFL defines "locally" as within a 75-mile radius of the stadium. Therefore, a TV blackout affects any market (affiliate station) whose terrestrial broadcast signal, under normal over-the-air conditions, penetrates into the 75-mile radius. These particular affiliates are determined before the season, and do not change as the season progresses. Some remote primary media markets, such as Denver and Phoenix, may cover that entire radius, therefore the blackout would not affect any other affiliates. An exception to the 75-mile rule is the market area for the Green Bay Packers, which stretches out to both the Green Bay and Milwaukee television markets (the team's radio flagship station is in Milwaukee, and selected Packer home games were played at Milwaukee until 1994), and to a smaller extent unofficially into the Escanaba/Marquette, Michigan market due to the presence of translator and satellite stations, along with extended cable coverage of Green Bay stations north into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. However, blackout rules do not come into effect for the Packers, due to a four-decade long streak of sellouts and a decades-long season ticket waiting list making any non-sellout game in the near future seem impossible. Similarly, no Super Bowl has ever been blacked-out in the market of origin since the new blackout rules came into effect, as every Super Bowl except the first was a sell-out, and with the game's high-profile status, it will probably never fail to sell out.
lol. Yeah, they do now. At 1st they would only have the other channel's game on (fox) Now they'll usually show a regional game or the hot / popular team. Being in Tampa, I'm sure they'd show a FL team 1st (depending on the opposing conference / channel) but I'm also sure the JETS will be a team of public interest, so that may bode well in the favor of their coverage across the nation. I just go to the bar every sunday..... the cost of the Sunday Ticket pays for our :beer:
