Post by TheShadow on Apr 14, 2006 6:19:25 GMT -5
www.sacbee.com
By Marcos Bretón -- Bee Sports Columnist
To be a sports fan in Sacramento is to suffer as one does when living across the freeway from prime real estate - or downwind from a stockyard.
Y'all know the story ...
We have only one "major" team in the Kings, and so our emotions fluctuate erratically from one Kings game to the next.
And if ever a community cocktail seemed appropriate, Wednesday was it after the Kings' meltdown against Phoenix at Arco Arena on Tuesday night.
Or maybe it was time to find an alternate sport?
The trouble is, in situations such as these, we must look to Bay Area baseball and football teams to claim as our own - though they most certainly are not.
Indeed, in the eyes of Major League Baseball and the NFL, Sacramento is a form of stepchild known as "a secondary market."
Loosely translated, that means that while the passion for the Raiders, 49ers, A's and Giants is just as intense here, we're cheap relations to the Bay Area.
We know this because when Raiders games are inevitably blacked out - and if future 49ers games ever are - then they will be blacked out in Sacramento as well.
But when the fledgling NFL Network carries 49ers and Raiders games exclusively on its subscriber-only channel this fall, Sacramento fans will have to purchase cable or satellite packages offering the NFL Network to see the games - while Bay Area fans get them for free.
Yes, it's the dirty kiss of capitalism, the legally sanctioned wallet grab heisted by the monopoly known as big-time sports.
"We may be a secondary market, but we pay with primary money," said Brian Hoey, a Sacramento resident and San Francisco transplant.
"How come we're a primary market when it's blackout time but a secondary market for a premium game?"
We took this question to the money printing factory known as the NFL, whose smooth representative responded with the confidence of a chocolate maker in a weight-loss clinic.
"There is a primary market for a cable game and for over-the-air games, and you can't confuse the two," said Seth Palansky, director of media services for the NFL Network.
"Blackouts for ticket sales have nothing to do with territory issues."
Raiders fans, in particular, know NFL games are blacked out on local television within a 75-mile radius of the home stadium - and if games are not sold out 72 hours before the opening kickoff.
But if games are not blacked out, the rules are different: The primary market for games on cable television is the home city of the home team and a surrounding area of 35 miles, Palansky said.
That leaves Sacramento out when the 49ers play the Seattle Seahawks on Dec. 14 and when the Raiders play the Kansas City Chiefs on Dec. 23 on the NFL Network.
In the Bay Area primary market, the NFL Network will make these games available to local network affiliates for free. But the vast majority of us in Sacramento don't receive the signals Bay Area stations send, so it's time to pay up.
If you have Comcast, that means a cable bill including the NFL Network costs about $63 a month - and about $45 a month for DirecTV, not counting installation.
While sympathetic to the secondary-market blues, Palansky said Sacramento is hardly unique:
"We hear from people all the time in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We have people who get the Ravens but want the Eagles. ... We have Cowboys fans in San Antonio, but the way this league is structured, we have policies that are 50 years old."
OK, so does this compare with hungry children in Africa? No.
But it's interesting that both the Raiders and 49ers see Sacramento-Stockton as a vital market.
"Nine percent of our season-ticket holders are based up there, and we classify Sacramento as one of our primary markets," said David Peart, vice president of sales and marketing for the 49ers.
But for Sacramento, being "secondary" in the eyes of the NFL signals another stick-up in the fleecing of sports fans, a dubious movement of many forms rapidly pricing out the working man or woman.
It's bad enough that stadiums and arenas are increasingly off-limits to working-class fans - but priced out in your own living room, too?
And when coupled with A's and Giants games occasionally blacked out in Sacramento, even if you plunk down nearly $200 for the MLB television package, and even if the games aren't being carried by local stations, it spells one central truth:
It stinks to be a secondary market.