Chiefs Chargers Blackout?

[sd4chiefs]

Sorry if repost.

http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-11...ndary-for-fans

It looks like this weekend we’re heading toward our first football blackout in San Diego in five years. Unless a lot of people buy tickets for Sunday’s game against the Chiefs in the next day or so, there will be no TV coverage in San Diego.

And ironically, if a lot of folks do buy tickets because they think there will be a blackout, then the TV coverage will magically reappear, helping everyone else. But not them. Curious indeed.

How can this happen in America? Don’t we have a constitutional right to watch football on Sundays? And doesn’t that right include the right to watch your own team, at least if you reside in its home territory?

I root for the Chargers, and I want to see the Chargers every Sunday that I’m not at the Q. My son Matt lives in New York, and we both understand that he may not get to see the Chargers unless he goes to a sports bar, buys a satellite package, or the Chargers happen to be on TV in New York that day.

But if he had the sense to live in San Diego, he could see his Chargers every week. Right? Well, not exactly. Indeed, Matt has a better shot of seeing the Chargers on TV this weekend than I do. (Actually, I’ll be at the game, but that’s beside the point.) How can this be?

Well, to begin with, you young folks may not believe this, but back in the old days (we’re talking the 1960s mostly) you couldn’t watch any NFL game being played in the metropolitan area where you lived. When I was a kid in Hartford, Conn., most people there rooted for the Giants. (There were no Jets or Patriots then, so it was a no brainer.) I was 120 miles from New York, so I could watch every Giants game on TV, home or away. But for fans who lived in NYC or the close suburbs, all home games were blacked out.

Why? So that people would buy tickets, rather than sit at home on their couches. OK, that makes some sense. But what if the game was sold out? The TV broadcast was still blacked out in metropolitan New York. Why? Who knows? But those were the rules. Road games were televised, home games were not.

When the Giants were good (Frank Gifford, Y. A. Tittle, Sam Huff, etc.), blacked out fans from New York drove up the turnpike into Connecticut, bought a few six packs, rented a cheap hotel room outside the radius of the blackout and watched their Giants. Fans complained about the blackouts, especially the illogical blackouts of sold-out games — but the NFL, being a monopoly (remember, no AFL yet) didn’t much care.

So what happened next? Well, way more legal action than you want to hear about — but here’s the short version:

The Justice Department brought an antitrust suit against the NFL about its TV rules, the AFL was formed, the AFL got a good national TV contract, the NFL asked Congress for help, the NFL and AFL merged, and Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act, protecting some TV deals from antitrust attack. Got it?

When the dust settled, the current blackout rule had been born. Games could be blacked out only if they were not sold out. So you don’t have a God-given or constitutional right to see your Chargers, but you have a legal right to see them if the game is sold out.

Now just to be clear, the law doesn’t require NFL blackouts, but it permits them. Also, the NFL doesn’t seem to require every single ticket to be sold. When they get down to 1,000 or so, they announce the game will be on TV.

And finally, the 72-hour deadline for sellouts is often deferred. But these are just details, and the basic concept is that if the game is virtually sold out, it will be on local TV, but if not, no local TV. No satellite, no sports bars — at least in greater San Diego. You can, like those Giants fans of old, drive and watch the game in a bar or motel as soon as you get far enough away from San Diego — assuming that stations within driving distance are carrying the Chargers game.

You can, of course, buy a ticket and watch in person. Here is where we move from law to psychology, since the blackout rule creates the gridiron version of the “prisoners’ dilemma” or some similar mind-bending puzzle.

If you buy a ticket, you make it more likely that other people will get to see it on TV. But if you refuse to buy a ticket, you make it more likely that you won’t see it at all. Every person who buys a ticket because of the feared blackout increases the chance that he is wasting his money because it will be shown on TV. To avoid that, everyone hopes that someone else will solve their problem and buy the remaining tickets. And this week, not enough will.

Why? First, the tickets for sale are not very attractive. If previous ticket buyers had any sense, the 6,000 remaining tickets should be among the worst in the stadium. Not that many people want to spend $60 or $80 or $100 for bad seats. And if half of the 6,000 remaining tickets got sold, the pickens would get even slimmer. The closer we get to lifting the blackout, the worse the seats available.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’ve rarely or never been to a Chargers game, even nosebleed seats can be great. The crowd can be electric, the cheerleaders are dancing, the beer is flowing. It has some big advantages over your couch. But having waited until the last minute, you are getting closer and closer to spending money on bad seats so that others can watch the game on TV. The guy who buys the last ticket can be seen as the biggest fool of all.

So, if there are all these built-in problems, why haven’t we had a Chargers blackout in five years? Well, several reasons. NFL football is fun to watch in person. Some people like to tailgate. Some people like to drink beer and joust with fans of the opposing team. Some people like fresh air. Some just want to get out of the house.

Also, the Chargers have been good most of that time. The Marty/Norv years have produced winning teams, either making the playoffs or missing close. And the opponent is often attractive. The Raiders, the Cowboys, the Dolphins and the Giants, among others, will all bring their own fans out, and bring out a lot of San Diegans who want to see the local boys beat that particular team. Some will come just to boo Eli Manning.

So why doesn’t this work this week?

We face a perfect storm. It’s a holiday weekend with lots of people out of town, or just coming back on Sunday, or in town but dealing with relatives. We also suffered a bad start for the Chargers, which took the edge off early ticket sales of late-season games.

And we have an unattractive opponent in the Chiefs, who had done nothing impressive all season until last week. Selling out a football game in San Diego is kind of like turning around an aircraft carrier — you can’t do it in five minutes. Last Monday morning, when people woke up and discovered that the Chargers were hot and the Chiefs were dangerous, it was too late to sell 7,000 remaining tickets. Especially to people with Thanksgiving plans.

So that’s the blackout story. Too many people want to watch the Chargers on TV, rather than in person — and as a result, none of them will get to watch it on TV. If you don’t like it, write your Congressman or President Obama. Maybe they can straighten this out, right after they get us a college football playoff system.



Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-11...#ixzz0XzWughbh

[CaliforniaChief]

Good news for us locals...there will be no blackout of tomorrow's game.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/sports/chargers/

Go Chiefs!

[Dead&Buried]

I suspect that you will be able to find a link to watch the game on the computer and NOT give the NFL any money for it. I gave up my direct TV package and I watch the games on the internet every week for free. **** them greedy bastards!

[Chiefs Pantalones]

Is the game being shown in AZ? I looked at the coverage map and it doesn't say, it just shows the early game.

[CaliforniaChief]

Originally Posted by Vanilla Thunder

Is the game being shown in AZ? I looked at the coverage map and it doesn't say, it just shows the early game.

It doesn't look like it...

http://the506.com/nflmaps/index.html

[007]

Typical Charger fans. Except BK. He is a good fan.

[2bikemike]

My daughter said the black out has been lifted. The game should be shown on TV which is a good thing because the whole Family will be here for a belated Thanksgiving Dinner