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September 30, 2014We’ve talked about the NFL’s TV blackout protection here on these pages plenty of times, and today might be the last time. At 10:30 AM today, the FCC is expected to get rid of the blackout rules that hold NFL cities hostage to sell out games or risk not being able to watch it on TV. While I think we all want stadiums to be raucous and filled with fans, it’s quite a leap to give special legal protections so that private businesses can help ensure they’ve got a hammer to force people to buy tickets to stadiums they likely paid for anyway.
As Mike Florio points out at PFT, this is a pretty natural step in the modern world and it likely won’t hurt the NFL anyway.
The scuttling of the blackout rule won’t cause the NFL to lose fans. But it will cause the NFL to lose the ability to sell those last several thousand tickets by scaring the locals into thinking they won’t be able to see the game unless they pay for the privilege to be there in person. Or maybe the more accurate answer is that it will force the NFL to be a little more creative when it comes to pricing tickets and/or coming up with reasons to get fans to choose to come to the games.
Another thing that Florio points out is the NFL’s campaign against the changing of the FCC rules. I hadn’t seen it before, but it’s hysterical. The website for that campaign looks like the picture at the top of this post.
Dig deeper and it’s even funnier. The NFL seems to be claiming that if the blackout rules are struck down that it’s a death knell for NFL games on “FREE broadcast television.” Here are the top three facts the NFL wants fans to know about blackout rules and all they do for us.
1. NFL games remain on FREE broadcast television because of the FCC’s sports blackout rule which has been working for nearly four decades.
2. While every other professional sport has moved to pay services like cable or satellite, the NFL makes every regular-season and playoff game available to you for FREE.
3. The rule promotes strong stadium attendance and benefits local restaurants, sports bars, and other small businesses near the stadiums.
This is nothing but a joke to any fans who have been paying attention lately. There’s no such thing as free TV anymore, really. There are a handful of people in the world that still take advantage of truly free TV via antenna, but the vast majority of people I know are beholden to a provider of either cable or satellite.
And remember the ugly fight between DirecTV and Raycom leading up to this year’s NFL season? Here in Cleveland, that fight was over carriage fees for the local “free” CBS affiliate. What’s to dispute if it’s a free station, right? Well, when Raycom charges DirecTV a fee to broadcast its channel to subscribers, guess what that does to the status of “free” TV? That’s right. It’s no longer free.
But the NFL would have you believe there are special “pay-TV lobbiests” who are trying to make you pay for NFL! Seems to me that the only ones who want me to have to pay for free TV are the actual providers like Raycom themselves.
8 Comments
Next up, tax exempt status!!!
Craig, I don’t know why you are hell-bent on complaining about the fact that a huge operation of an NFL game is beamed into your living room at a cost. The fact is that it is made available on broadcast TV pretty consistently (your complaints about how you get it via cable or satellite notwithstanding).
Holding hostage, really?
Do you similarly yell at the TV when you are paying your cable bill while watching “Dancing With the Stars” or “Boardwalk Empire” or is the NFL on a different standard?
Yes, you have to pay for electricity to power the magic box and to get the magic signal beamed into your house. Watching the NFL for free is not a universal, God-given liberty. Productions cost money, and we have to pay money in some way to watch. This is life.
You know who we have to thank for not having every NFL home game blacked out? Richard M. Nixon. Took the threat of lifting their antitrust exemption. Nowadays, it’s ridiculous to think that owners wanted LESS eyes on their product.
I don’t understand this comment. I get that there’s a cost. I pay that cost. Just don’t tell me that something is free while simultaneously forcing me to pay for it. I pay for NFL Sunday Ticket, and DirecTV and by way of doing that, I’m paying Raycom for my local CBS affiliate which shows the Browns. I don’t expect that to be free, really. I’m simply saying, don’t pretend that it is free. It’s not and we all know it.
The hostage part is saying a city’s population has to buy every seat in the stadium in order for me to see it on the TV package which I already pay money for.
I’m demanding that all concerts held in Cleveland be broadcast on free local TV. Why should I have to buy a ticket and then go downtown and pay for parking? I want it FREE, dammit!
Well to be fair, that’s not exactly how you’ve come off on the subject of paying for the NFL product. This coupled with past related posts about how DirecTV being a ripoff for NFL, the unfairness that cable & satellite don’t allow ala cart pricing (and that you shouldn’t have to pay for what you don’t want), etc.
You should realize that there are ex pat fans (like me in LA) who don’t have access to the stadium or cable views and DirecTV is our only option to watch the Browns. While it ain’t “cheap” I feel grateful that DirecTV allows me to join in (albeit subsequently regretful for watching the Browns work product oftentimes)
But ok, you’re saying (with a straight face) that you’re fine paying for the product, but you just don’t like the insult of them saying it’s “free” to broadcast viewers? Alright then. I guess I have to take you at your word.
So if you don’t like them saying it’s “free” (even though it is and has been via broadcast), yet you don’t like them saying you have to fill up your stadium before we broadcast, yet you don’t want to pay DirecTV all that money, what’s the answer to fair pricing and delivery for all?
I don’t think this one happens, but it should.
There are a million issues going on here.
I love my DirecTV service. LOVE it. I also think it’s overpriced. Well, maybe overpriced is too strong. It’s premium priced to be sure, though. I think there’s a lot more meat in the packages than what I actually need. It’s not the end of the world, but holy hell I’ll SCREAM about my financial commitment when they get into a conflict with Raycom over money that impacts my viewing. I think it’s a bit overpriced even though I love it, but do something to make me not LOVE it? Hell to pay.
That’s one thing.
Local blackouts wherein a local NFL franchise was LEGALLY protected by the government to guarantee that they could sell 100% of their tickets before it would be on TV? Luckily it hasn’t been an issue in CLE, but it’s criminal to think the NFL in this day and age could use public money for the stadium and its improvements and also get to hold the local market hostage with ticket sales quotas on top of it.
Nothing to do with Sunday Ticket for out of market people. They wouldn’t black that out for you regardless and they shouldn’t because you out of market folks pay a huge price to get your team much like we do so my wife can have the Colts.