C.Biscuit97 Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Didn't seem to matter when Cleveland moved. There was a huge backlash after that and the NFL admitted their mistake by giving them an expansion team. The NFL would take a huge PR hit if they moved a team that constantly supported their team despite a lot of crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magox Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 But, but the Bills are the one's more likely to move, I know, I was told Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLynchTrain Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 I like this response on PFT: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/...ckouts-in-2009/ # Bender says: August 21, 2009 8:09 AM This whole "we know its hard times" line is total bull. They want blackouts. If they didn't they would price seats so that a family of four could reasonably enjoy a day at the game for the same as a night at the movies. Right now they are getting ZERO dollars for every empty seat, when they could be getting 15 or 20. They want blackouts, they want a reason to move the team. Um, don't they have the cheapest seat in the league? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GR8PRKN Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 I like this response on PFT: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/...ckouts-in-2009/ # Bender says: August 21, 2009 8:09 AM This whole "we know its hard times" line is total bull. They want blackouts. If they didn't they would price seats so that a family of four could reasonably enjoy a day at the game for the same as a night at the movies. Right now they are getting ZERO dollars for every empty seat, when they could be getting 15 or 20. They want blackouts, they want a reason to move the team. Um, don't they have the cheapest seat in the league? I live in Fl and in Orlando the Dolphins and the Bucs have Billboards for games..... Jax has none... poor marketing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dean Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Since Jax isn't here to add another reasonable perspective to this thread, let me help him out: Jacksonville has the best football fans in the world...they just don't like the NFL. They won't have blackouts, they never do! (Ignore the fact that they do.) The Jags will never leave Jacksonville as local politicians won't allow it! Buffalo has the worst fans, the worst stadium and the worst team. They will move mid-season. (Have I covered all of it?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLynchTrain Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Since Jax isn't here to add another reasonable perspective to this thread, let me help him out: (Have I covered all of it?) Hey Dean, you know you can do better than that. You at least have to spell 2-3 words wrong in Jax's statements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dean Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Hey Dean, you know you can do better than that. You at least have to spell 2-3 words wrong in Jax's statements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flutie Flakes Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 No surprise here really. In the week 2 game versus the Bills, the ends of the upper sections were covered. A sunny 80+ degree day early in the season and they have to resort to blocking off sections of their stadium. Pathetic. Here is a novel idea, donate tickets to local charities to fill those sections and avoid blackout. Must be a taxable writeoff for this, game gets televised, more viewers more excitement, which hopefully draws more paying customers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bills_fan_in_raleigh Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 So I guess we wont be seeing tarps all over seats and claiming sellouts by the Jags. The Jags are the best candidate for relocation of any other team in the league Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lv-Bills Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Watching the Bengals game last night on NFL Network, they were pumping tickets for their HOME OPENER all through last nights game. Teams will be struggling this year, and I'm guessing while the NFL's popularity is at an all time high, teams that are bad are going to start encountering sales problems and blackouts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bufcomments Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 That last comment is especially interesting to me, too, since it fits with my own (and I imagine also your own) childhood experiences. The lifting of total blackouts in 1973 did not lead to automatic broadcasts at all. I am under the impression that few Bills home games were broadcast (except as pirated versions by International cable) in the OJ years, though that was before I was completely aware of such things. I do know that no home Bills game was televised locally between 1975 and the Raiders game in September 1980, and as late as the Bills home opener in 1990 blackouts were the rule rather than the exception. I always chalked that up to the Bills being one of the less successful franchises (ahem) in most of those years, and certainly the relative size of Rich in those days was a problem. Nevertheless, I also get the impression that back then no one would even have thought of using blackouts as a measure of a team's success, since they were so common. During my teens years ( i'm 45 now, you do the math) I don't remember any Bills home games on TV. When the Bills played at the Rockpile on Jefferson Ave My Father, Mother and I used to walk to the Stadium and watch the games. (we lived only 6 blocks away at the time.) Think I went to every home game between 69-76 when I was a kid. The only reason we went because my Father loved to see OJ run.... thanks Dad for the season Tickets. I remember asking my father one Sunday on the way to the game, why don't we watch the games on TV ? He said they never show the home games on TV because of the Blackout rule. Back in those days either you saw the game live or waited for the highlights to come on TV. Channel 7 was my favorite back then because of Rick Azar, who did the broadcasts on the Radio before Van Miller got the job. But most of the time when I was a teenager I listened to Vans Broadcast of the home games . I start going to the games with friends ( which means the parking lot experience)on the regular after we signed Jim Kelly back in 86'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dean Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 No surprise here really. In the week 2 game versus the Bills, the ends of the upper sections were covered. A sunny 80+ degree day early in the season and they have to resort to blocking off sections of their stadium. Pathetic. Here is a novel idea, donate tickets to local charities to fill those sections and avoid blackout. Must be a taxable writeoff for this, game gets televised, more viewers more excitement, which hopefully draws more paying customers. So I guess we wont be seeing tarps all over seats and claiming sellouts by the Jags. The Jags are the best candidate for relocation of any other team in the league The tarped seats are NFL approved, from what I understand, and don't count toward the sellout. There are about 10,000 tarped seats. The Jags can't sell out the remaining seats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOBILLS78 Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Personally, I'm expecting at least 16 blackouts this season. We're talking about drinkin', right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJ (not THAT RJ) Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Because we live so far away -- before the four-lane section of 219, Rich Stadium was easily a two-hour trip from here -- we didn't go to many games. And you're right, I have far more memories of listening to Van Miller than I do of watching those home games on TV. I grew up in Niagara Falls, and OP seemed very far away in the 1970s (another example of how times have changed...), so we never drove to games. I listened to a lot of Al Meltzer even before Van, and, as others have said, stayed up late on Sunday nights to watch the highlights on the 11:00 news, and of course Rick Azar's weekly Bills highlights show on Saturday night.... I remember very well when the Raider game sold out in time to lift the blackout in 1980. I was 13, had only been to Rich once before in my life (1976, Jim Ringo's first game as head coach, Bills lost 31-13 to the Colts, OJ caught a TD pass...). It was the first time I ever saw Rich Stadium live on TV. BillCody1960 has posted tape of that game on youTube, and I almost got choked up thinking about watching that with my dad. Funny how sporting events can have that kind of memory power... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drnykterstein Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Meanwhile, the Bills have the 3rd highest season ticket output in team history. And yet we're the ones more likely to move, eh? The reason we would move has nothing to do with ticket sales and everything to do with us not having anyone with money to buy the team once Ralph kicks it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
berndogg Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 If the Bills have another sub .500 year I'm predicting at least 10 blackouts for myself. Only way I can deal with the pain these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sen. John Blutarsky Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 The tarped seats are NFL approved, from what I understand, and don't count toward the sellout. There are about 10,000 tarped seats. The Jags can't sell out the remaining seats. You are correct that they don't count towards the sellout. However there are more than 10,000 covered seats. The NFL "capacity" is 67,164. The capacity for the annual Florida UGA game better known as the World's Largest Cocktail party is north of 84,000. So there are at least 17,000 fewer NFL seats. Also, tickets in premium "club" areas do not count against the blackout. In Jacksonville, every lower bowl seat between the 20's is a "club" seat. (Link to the Jags seating chart, see the gray areas)That's, conservatively, 25% of the remaining uncovered capacity of the entire stadium. So really Jacksonville only needs to sell about 50,000 seats to be allowed to call it a sellout. So let's say it plainly, Jacksonville's stadium can accomodate about 5 to 10 thousand more people than ours (Super Bowl attendance was 78k+). They have to sell fewer tickets than we have season ticket holders to avoid blackouts, have 300k more people in the metro area to sell them to, have a consistently good playoff team, and can't do it to the point that they are announcing season long blackouts in August. They can't even get close enough for it to be worth anyone's while to buy up the rest to get them on TV. BTW - The city of Jacksonville covers almost all of Duval County which is why it's population is so high. The city covers 875 square miles. All of Erie County covers about 1,050. Buffalo would jump dramatically in size if it encompassed the whole metro area. (which is a good idea because it gets you more federal money, but that's a different discussion). Jacksonville is a pathetic excuse of an NFL franchise and if they ever move the Bills before a team with tarps the NFL should be ashamed of itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 There was a huge backlash after that and the NFL admitted their mistake by giving them an expansion team. The NFL would take a huge PR hit if they moved a team that constantly supported their team despite a lot of crap. And then, a year or two later, they'd move on. Just like they did when Balto moved to Indy, when Cleveland moved to Balto, when Oakland moved to LA, LA to Oakland and so on and so forth> Don't fool yourself into thinking Buffalo of all places is any different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJ (not THAT RJ) Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 And then, a year or two later, they'd move on. Just like they did when Balto moved to Indy, when Cleveland moved to Balto, when Oakland moved to LA, LA to Oakland and so on and so forth> Don't fool yourself into thinking Buffalo of all places is any different. Too true Joe. I do not like to make predictions, and still hope that somehow the Bills will not move, but I believe strongly that if the Bills do move, after a very brief flurry of crocodile-tear-stained reports, neither the NFL or any of the sports networks or anyone born outside of a 100 mile radius of RWS will notice or care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WVUFootball29 Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 The Jags aren't moving, the local politicians said so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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