NFL’s Detroit Lions have a few too many tickets that have gone unsold, and as a result, the team's home game scheduled for this Sunday 11/22/09 versus the Cleveland Browns will not be available for local viewing.
According to the Detroit Free Press, there were 7K tickets available as of Wednesday 11/18/09, and a deadline to get them sold was missed. It is said to be the eighth time this has happened during the team's last 11 home games.
The team’s next home game – they face the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving -- also has an undisclosed number of unsold tickets remaining.
RBR-TVBR observation: The black-out policy really seems more and more like an anachronism. Do people really avoid going to the stadium because they can see the game on TV? We suppose the NFL has stats somewhere that suggest it still happens, but we strongly suspect it is not that big a factor in this day and age.
So local fans who for whatever reason wish to watch the game on television lose. Local television loses. Local advertisers lose. The Lions still don’t have a sellout and they are not available to their fans, so they lose.
Just who is the winner under this policy?
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