Making The Call: The NFL Plays Scrooge

The NFL showed again this week that they don’t get it. In the midst of the worst recession in decades, the NFL is stubbornly sticking to its policy of blacking out home games in areas where they don’t sell all the tickets. But generously, the NFL will allow fans who have a game blacked out to watch the game online, AFTER midnight- are you excited yet?

What the NFL doesn’t seem to realize is that nobody wants to stay up past midnight when they have a job to get to the next day. They don’t want to stay up and watch a game when the highlights have been shown a million times on Sportscenter or other outlets. What people want is to be able to watch their team play live and while they might like to see it in person, the league-average ticket price of $75 a seat may be prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. The NFL could have been magnanimous, after all, the league earns billions a year, but instead they are going to try and squeeze every penny they can from fans.

And New York fans should keep an eye on this issue because it may affect them soon. Thanks to the PSL policy, the Giants and Jets no longer sell every seat as a season ticket. Next week’s Jets-Patriots game hasn’t sold out and unless someone wants to start shelling out $90 per seat for Section 326, you may get the chance to try watching the Jets online after midnight.