Lost in the ongoing (and perhaps soon to be resolved) question of whether the NFL’s blackout policy should continue is the reality that the NFL has had no games blacked out through the first two weeks of the 2014 regular season.
Which makes us wonder why the blackout policy even matters.
Of course, it’s still early in the season. Also, the NFL has adjusted the policy in recent years to allow teams to have their home games televised locally even without a full stadium. Currently, as few as 85 percent of the non-premium seats need to be sold -- and none of the premium seats -- in order to avoid a blackout, if the team has decided to accept the lower limit for all home games.
The Bengals decided for the first time in 2014 to accept the full reduction, and they had to sweat a bit before hitting the 85-percent mark earlier this week. Some teams opt to buy unsold tickets at 34 cents on the dollar, although it’s unclear whether that has happened yet this year.
Regardless, blackouts currently aren’t an issue; but the blackout policy is. And the NFL continues to push the goofy “Protect Free Football on TV” movement via a link under the “Watch Games” tab on the home page of the league-owned website. The trumped-up movement blames the effort to scrap the blackout rule on “Pay-TV lobbyists [who] have manufactured a controversy in an effort to change the current rule and charge fans for games that they currently watch for free.”
The reality is that the NFL is manufacturing a hollow threat regarding a problem that doesn’t exist.
Then again, given the way things have gone over the past week, maybe half-full stadiums will eventually become the norm.
