Do you like to spend your Sunday sitting on the couch watching your favorite local pro football team on the TV? Then this might not be your season.
Two teams — the San Diego Chargers and the Jacksonville Jaguars— say it's likely they will have home TV blackouts this season due to an inability to sell out their stadiums. At least 10 other teams could also face blackouts.
"People are having it tough down here," Jaguars senior VP of business development Tim Connolly said. "People are watching their dollars and they're being tighter than ever."
During a visit to the Washington Redskins on Tuesday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked specifically about the Jaguars, whose season-ticket base dropped from 42,000 to about 25,000 this season. The decline is such that the club might not even bother asking for extensions in hopes of avoiding blackouts this year.
The Jaguars and the Chargers are very good teams with strong fan bases. If they can't sell out then what does it say for teams that aren't so good, like the Oakland Raiders and Detroit Lions?
The problem might be here for a while.
Wayne Huizenga saw it coming.
Fifteen months ago, I spoke with him at a community event in Coconut Creek, Fla. He still owned the Miami Dolphins then and was stressed about how the economy was going to impact ticket sales in 2008.
"You have some people who say 'I'm really excited, but I can't afford it,' " Huizenga said at the time.
NFL rules forbid local broadcasting of a game if it doesn't sell out 72 hours prior to kickoff. This includes satellite coverage.
There were 9 blackouts for the league last year.
The rule is in place to encourage fans to pay the high ticket prices to see their teams. However, consistent local blackouts will cause long-term problems by not exposing possible new fans to their product.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is aware of the problem and is making small steps to address it.
However, Goodell's primary focus right now is to head off a possible labor problem when the NFL Player's union contract expires after next season.