Blackouts Coming?
August 20th, 2009For the second day in a row, the Bucs gave away free tickets to next week’s preseason home opener against Miami. No less a figure than Bucs general manager Mark Dominik was handing out tickets to fans who attended the final Bucs training camp practice at One Buc Palace.
eye-RAH! Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune reports Dominik had tickets in wads of 50 and was giving them out as if they were business cards.
First-year GM Mark Dominik, standing in the blazing sun, shook hands, signed autographs and reached for a thick stack of ducats on Freebie Wednesday, as Tampa Bay supporters lined up for tickets to the Aug. 27 home preseason game against Miami.
“How many do you need?” Dominik asked, quickly thinning out a stack of approximately 50 tickets before reaching into another pocket to reload. “Are you definitely going to go? OK, take these.”
It’s an unsettling image since this scares Joe into believing there might be blackouts.
To that end, WTSP-TV has a report on the possibility of blackouts and what that may mean both for fans who can’t afford tickets as well as businesses.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Ticket prices are too high, and the economy is to fragile. I’m doing my part but at $75 per ticket for the “upper” 300 sections x 4 (my family) = $300 x 10 games = $3000… and I have not even parked or paid for any extra stuff like food and drinks. The same tickets in Jacksonville are $44 dollars each and they can’t sell those out either.
Few can part with $3000 a year and I am in row DD at the top of the stadium, (I like my seats but many would not) and if I upgraded to the lower bowl add $560 to $960 more dollars. (no thanks I told them on an upgrade)
If they raise ticket prices (30%) again then I may have to give up going
The product on the field is important but I’m a Bucs fan so I know this product is not the worst product put on the field by the Bucs.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:33 am
BTY did you see the Jags are expecting 10! blackouts! WOW!
August 21st, 2009 at 8:44 am
Pete:
What the Tampa Bay area is to baseball is what the Jacksonville area is to the NFL: Terrible.
That gimmick with the tarp in the upper deck is an embarrassment, reminds Joe of what the Pittsburgh Pirates used to do at Three Rivers Stadium.
It’s not like people there don’t like football. Just look at the crowds for Florida-Georgia or Florida State-Alabama. Jacksonville just isn’t an NFL market; it’s a college football market.
August 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am
Its true that the Jags Stadium is just to big for an NFL stadium in that market. It could be 100,000 for the Florida- Georgia game and it still would not be enough.
To bad, for years I remember the City wanting NFL football, courting the Colts and others. The Jacksonville
Bulls of the USFL did very well at the gate for that league. I even attended a Bulls game once and it was a big crowd full of energy. And that was against the Memphis Showboats!
They are really stuck because of the stadiums size, they will never fill 80,000 but due to the college commitments they are in a no win scenario…unless they field a SB team soon.