Word: nfl
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...NFL season, which kicks off on Sept. 10 when the defending Super Bowl Champions the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Tennessee Titans, is ripe with intriguing story lines. After missing last season due to injury, can New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady return to Super Bowl form? After spending nearly two years in the slammer, how will Michael Vick fit into the Philadelphia Eagles' offense, not to mention society? And perhaps most puzzling of all, Why, during these historically bad economic times, is the NFL sticking it to its fans? (See the top 10 sports comebacks...
...stadium 72 hours prior to kickoff - which dates to 1973, when the league feared that TV broadcasts would stop people from buying tickets - affected just a handful of games. But in the wake of the nation's worst recession in decades, as many as a dozen of the NFL's 32 markets, including Arizona, Cincinnati, Detroit, Jacksonville, Minnesota and San Diego, are in danger of having their local telecasts blacked out. A Jacksonville Jaguars official says it's "very possible" that none of the team's eight home games will be broadcast in the hard-hit region (by comparison, only...
...Clark and other football fans shouldn't hold their breath. "No consideration is being given to changing the blackout policy," says NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. "It has served us well for decades, and we think it would be a mistake to alter it." And as much as some local officials may be griping about it, teams aren't necessarily helping. Some teams that are facing the prospect of blackouts haven't even lowered their ticket prices to entice fans. In Jacksonville, for example, the average general-admission ticket costs $57.34, a 3.7% increase from 2008, according to Team Marketing Report...
...sports league has enough leverage to squeeze its passionate fans - the NFL even blocks satellite-TV signals so bars can't broadcast the game from out of town - it's this one. Despite the recession, from 2008 through 2011, the league will have received $11.6 billion from its network-television partners. Thus, it is keeping the blackout rule to maximize lucrative game-day revenues...
...Still, the league hasn't been immune to the downturn: about 160 employees in the league office, for example, were either laid off or took buyouts over the past year. "When there are empty seats at NFL games, everything around the business of the NFL has been compromised," says David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California, who says that crucial revenues to pay players, stadium bonds and private investors are at risk. Another reason for the rule is that the league believes a full house with screaming fans enhances the television-viewing...