Quote:Many teams wrestle with ways to avoid the blackouts.  There are only a certain number of teams that can boast a string of sellouts consistently, and aside from Green Bay, they're all big market teams.  The funny thing is that many of those big market franchises play in smaller venues than the Jaguars, so they have larger pool of fans to work with, and less inventory to move.  And still, there are bigger market teams that don't sell as many tickets as the Jaguars do on a regular basis.  Jacksonville and the surrounding area have really had to overachieve. 

 

Finding ways to avoid blackouts wasn't behavior that was exclusive to Jacksonville, but you'd never know that listening to the media.

 

How do you think Miami has been able to achieve the lack of blackouts?  Anyone who has watched a Dolphins home game knows that their attendance at home games is pretty lackluster.  Same with Tampa.  But, the Jaguars are the team that gets hammered.  Or at least they used to.  Why?  Because the team didn't do a good enough job of reaching out to the business community to take care of buying up those remaining seats.  That has changed under Khan's leadership.

 

You never hear anyone talking about the entire upper deck of that dump in Oakland being covered in tarps to reduce capacity.

 

When Indy built their new stadium, they made it smaller than their previously small venue in order to anticipate a drop in ticket sales when the team started to struggle again.

 

During their down years, Carolina was struggling to bring in more than 15-20k for some of their games, but they still claimed a sellout because they had the PSLs that assured people were on the hook to buy their tickets no matter what.  Fans just stopped coming to games. 

 

The tacks have a similar PSL situation, but look at the number of empty seats they have there for home games of late.

 

The Rams are another team that has had so much trouble selling tickets that it's the impetus behind potentially NOT getting a new stadium and ultimately relocating.

 

Here in Jacksonville, considering the level of production we've seen from the Jaguars, particularly over the past 5 years or so, I'd have to say that the fans here have stepped up and done their job, continuing to grow the season ticket basebdespite the team struggling. 

 

In addition to all of that, I made several trips recently (within the last year) up to the Washington DC area, and it certainly is not a "small market".  DC has tarps on some of their seats.

 

Why is this not shown prominently on national television like it was when the Jaguars did the same?  There could be a couple of reasons.

 

First reason could be because Jacksonville is that "little hick town in Florida" whereas Washington DC is a "real" place.

 

Second reason could be that when Jacksonville placed tarps over areas, it was the beginning of a real recession regarding the economy.  When something like that happens, it tends to hit places that are on the lower end of the average earnings scale quicker and more harshly than major cities.  Jacksonville, as well as most other NFL cities saw their ticket sales plummeting because people just didn't have the disposable income to buy NFL tickets.

 

The NFL saw that the failing economy was hurting ticket sales throughout the league, and is doing "damage control".  They don't want their product blacked out because revenue would fall further.  After all, they do need that television revenue.

 

Where the hypocrisy is, and I find this mildly amusing, quite a few websites and fan sites mocked the Jaguars for the tarps, yet they are seeing the same thing in their own stadiums right now.  I personally would like to see the economy turn around to the point that ALL teams start filling their stadiums.

---