againstblackouts.com

 

Founded
2011
About
A group of fans, friends, & sportsbar owners who are against sporting events being blacked out in their area bc of ticket sales.
Description

The NFL does not control the Blackout rule, nor do the local teams, or the media. The rule is in the hands of Congress, who ultimately are in the hands of the people. It should be noted that among the rules that come up the most often for change in congress, The Blackout Policy of 1973 is among the most each year.

These old laws of 1973 are still in place and, in today’s economical times, do not positively help the teams (or the sport) maintain a following. In many cases, local taxpayers are paying to fund stadiums. Then the stadiums are hosting games the locals taxpayers do not have an opportunity to watch with family & friends, unless they buy tickets or the games are sold out. These laws need to be petitioned to be changed. We are here to push this issue.

General Information
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 72 hours prior to its start time. Prior to 1973, all games were blacked out in the home city of origin regardless of whether they were sold out. This policy, dating back to the NFL’s emerging television years, resulted in home-city blackouts even during championship games. For instance, the 1958 “Greatest Game Ever Played” between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was unavailable to New York fans despite the sellout. (Many fans rented hotel rooms in Connecticut to watch the game on Hartford TV, a practice that continued for Giants games through 1972.) Similarly, all Super Bowl games prior to the seventh edition were unavailable 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. The league will sometimes change 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 in special cases.Alternatively, some NFL teams have arrangements with local television stations or businesses to purchase unsold tickets. Tickets in premium club sections have been excluded from the blackout rule in past years, as have unused tickets allocated to the visiting team. The Jacksonville Jaguars have even gone further and closed off a number of sections at their home EverBank Field to reduce the number of tickets they would need to sell. EverBank Field is one of the largest in the NFL, as it was built to also accommodate the annual Florida-Georgia game and Gator Bowl and was expanded for Super Bowl XXXIX even though it draws from one of the smallest markets in the league. The NFL requires that closing off sections be done uniformly for every home game, including playoff games, in a given season. This prevents teams from trying to sell out the entire stadium only when they expect to be able to do so.
Mission
To provide awareness to those who agree with our outlook that the blackouts hinder local business & sports team profits.
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