Blackout Vote Expected Tomorrow
June 20th, 2011
"Did we remember to mail Dan Snyder that cheesecake?"
In a move that could bring a swift end to The Blackout Tour, it’s been reported in Jacksonville that NFL owners will vote tomorrow on whether to allow teams to decrease the total number of seats that must be sold in order to avoid a blackout by 15 percent.
Joe’s going to assume the owners of Team Blackout will be flashing thumbs-ups and toothy grins to their constituents when the agenda reaches that topic.
So what does this mean? Essentially, the Bucs’ home at the C.I.T.S. seats roughly 65,000, and about 53,000 of those seats are NOT club seats. All non-premium seats must be sold to avoid a blackout under current rules.
Take the Bucs’ December home games in 2010 and assume for a moment the Bucs sold half of their club seats for those games. That means the Bucs would have had to sell roughly 53,000 regular-guy seats plus the 6,000 club seats to get the games on TV.
Here’s the official attendance for those games:
53,955 vs. Atlanta
47,692 vs. Detroit
46,576 vs. Seattle
Unfortunately, if the new blackout rule takes effect, the Bucs would still have to increase attendance by some huge percentages to get all games televised.
Joe wonders whether Team Glazer is lining up corporations now to gobble up remaining tickets if the Bucs find themselves, say, 2,000 shy of a “sellout” under the proposed new blackout rules.
June 20th, 2011 at 9:16 am
According to the prices they’ve been sending me; there will be walk up single game tickets available for $50. This is a huge difference from previous $89 tickets the team was pushing. This will allow more middle class and blue collar workers who are the true football fans afford to go to these games. This team is young and now has an exciting QB. You will see an increase in ticket sales once this lockout is over. Fans are just now starting to warm up to these new potential superstars.
June 20th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Winning will solve this problem.It’s the cure for ticket sales.
June 20th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Get used to the blackouts until we see a real investment into this team. The town as a whole just doesn’t care nor connect with this team led by an inexperienced coach and a team that is very undisciplined on the field and off.
A better representation in society, like that of the Barbers, Lynches, Alstotts etc, helps a community identify with players.
That is the very reason that this team should CUT Talib immediately. I know that Joe is arguing for the admissible proofs to fall short of in Talib’s Texas criminal case. I am told that Talib’s mom places the gun in Talib’s hand (which he denies) when she heard a shot coming from Talib’s direction and nobody else had a gun at that time. Ouch!!
Joe, for the good of this team’s image and in light of all of the criminal problems in the last year or so, I would think that you and others would support releasing Talib. Lets get rid of the hooligans, character does matter.
June 20th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Um Patrick:
The bucs were playing the Lions with the playoffs in the balance and we had a WHOPPING 47,000 – and that was with Rookie of the Year, All-Pro and obvious Hall of Famer Ndomakong Suh playing. lol
June 20th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Joe here,
@Thomas 2.2 — Joe doesn’t have strong feelings about Talib either way. But the fact is he’s more valuable to the Bucs on the team and playing, and for the sake of a potential trade.
Joe is NOT arguing for Talib in his case. It’s just painfully clear that there’s a crappy case against Talib and he’s not going to be found guilty of a felony.
If the Bucs cut Talib, Joe would find it foolish considering they could trade the guy, but surely Joe wouldn’t be fazed and the Bucs wouldn’t be suffering some grave loss. The guy isn’t reliable. Joe has written that many times.