Post by TheShadow on Dec 29, 2004 8:00:33 GMT -5
www.mercurynews.com
HAS NFL RULE ON SELLOUTS BECOME ARCHAIC?
By Darren Sabedra
Mercury News
When the Raiders play Jacksonville in their season finale Sunday, they could draw their smallest home crowd since they returned to the Bay Area a decade ago -- 40,032 attended the 1997 finale, also against the Jaguars.
But even if the Raiders exceed that number, one thing seems certain: The game will not be shown on local TV because of an NFL blackout policy that has become a familiar foe for Raiders fans.
In the past 10 seasons, 67 percent (53 of 79) of Oakland's regular-season home games have been blacked out because Network Associates Coliseum wasn't sold out by the league deadline of 72 hours before kickoff.
There are numerous reasons for the Raiders' predicament -- among them a small season-ticket base and ongoing friction with Coliseum officials -- but it's the fans who seemingly pay the steepest price.
Which raises two questions:
• At a time when much of the league's revenue is tied to its $17.6 billion television contracts and competition for entertainment dollars is getting more and more fierce, is the blackout policy outdated?
• Also, is the NFL concerned that teams such as the Raiders and Arizona -- and perhaps the 49ers next season -- struggle to sell out their games?
``We'd love for all of our teams to win the Super Bowl every year and sell out every one of their games,'' league spokesman Greg Aiello said. ``But that's not how the real world works. We have a system where some teams are going to go through losing seasons and struggle. We can't have 100 percent customer satisfaction. It's not part of the system of sports.''
The blackout policy was instituted in the early 1960s to ensure the largest crowds possible. At the time, no home games were televised in local markets, regardless of whether they were sold out. But when the Washington Redskins started winning in the early 1970s, Congress intervened because it wanted all of the hometown team's games on television.
It passed a law, stating that if a team sold out its stadium 72 hours before game time, the blackout would be lifted. The mandate expired three years later, but the NFL continues to honor the rule that prohibits TV stations with a signal penetrating a 75-mile radius of the stadium from broadcasting games that don't meet the blackout deadline.
That said, the league has no plans to soften the rule or abolish the blackout policy altogether -- for one simple reason.
``It makes it tougher to sell tickets if home games are automatically on television, and we know that,'' Aiello said. ``That's how the policy came into being.''
In a round-table forum published in Sports Illustrated a few years ago, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said changing the policy ``would be a tragic, tragic mistake for the National Football League and its fans.''
Asked why, Tagliabue said: ``Because the experience of having 60,000 people in a sold-out stadium is what makes this sport. It's perfectly clear that if you don't sell out games when you're not on television, you won't sell them out when they are on television.
``We'll have far fewer season tickets sold. People will buy individual game tickets and wait to see what the weather is like and what their team is like in November and December, and we'll destroy our game. I've thought about this for 30 years, and I'm not going to change my opinion.''
Andy Dolich knows a little about filling stadiums. When he oversaw the A's marketing department in the 1980s, he implemented a ``power promotion'' plan, which called for a significant, attendance-boosting giveaway (bats, caps) against a top opponent (Yankees, Red Sox) and put the game on TV. Fans at home would see the festive crowd and want to go next time.
``The teams I've worked for, the more television, the better,'' said Dolich, now the president of business operations for the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies. ``In the '80s, we always viewed the games as a 2 1/2-hour to three-hour commercial for our product.''
Dolich said he agrees with people who say the NFL's blackout policy is archaic. But he concedes that football is different from other sports because the league divides its television revenue equally among its 32 teams.
``It's like, `OK, that's cool, do whatever you want as long as you don't penalize me by taking other money,' '' Dolich said.
The way the NFL sees it, its blackout policy doesn't affect many fans. Roughly 90 percent of its games are televised in the home team's market, up from 60 to 70 percent in the 1970s, according to Aiello.
``We're on pace to set an attendance record, to break the record that was set last year, over 66,000 per game average paid attendance,'' Aiello said. ``And the blackout-lift rate is where it's been over the last couple of years. Teams have worked very hard to create sellout situations.''
The Raiders' situation is unique, however. Their well-documented feud with Coliseum officials led to a four-month trial in Sacramento in 2003. It ended with a jury deciding that the Coliseum owed the Raiders $34.2 million for misrepresenting the status of ticket sales just before owner Al Davis signed a 16-year lease. But the jury also determined that two other defendants, developer Edwin DeSilva and the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, were not liable and awarded the Raiders only a fraction of the $833 million they sought.
Both sides claimed victory.
As of now, the Raiders' season-ticket base is only about half of the stadium's 63,132 capacity and could decrease when personal-seat licenses expire after next season. The team's average attendance of 52,117 this season -- it includes two sellouts -- is its worst since averaging 49,768 in 1999.
The small season-ticket base has left the Oakland Football Marketing Association -- a joint venture involving the team, Alameda County and the city of Oakland -- with hardly any budget to market the team.
So unless approximately 25,000 tickets are sold 72 hours before any given game (luxury suite tickets aren't included for blackout purposes), fans hoping to watch from home are left in the dark.
``It's unfortunate that we're impacted by the rule, because if the Coliseum representatives had not lied to us about the stadium being sold out, we wouldn't be in this position,'' Jeff Birren, the team's general counsel, said Monday.
After the trial, James Brosnahan, an attorney representing the Coliseum, said that the verdict defeated the Raiders' ``strategy of breaking the lease and moving to Los Angeles.''
To which the Raiders countered that it was never their intention to break the lease. They simply sought what was promised: A sold-out stadium.
But with those games few and far between -- and the NFL intent on keeping its blackout rule -- the Raiders seem destined for more radio-only home games.
Unless they start winning. In their Super Bowl season of 2002, the Raiders averaged 60,037, their best at the ticket office since their return to Oakland.
Success on the field, Aiello said, ``solves many problems. It's certainly an issue and has been the same in other places. Teams go through cycles based on winning and losing and sometimes other factors.''