What’s Keeping NFL Fans in the Dark?

No one can fault Green Bay fans if they forgo a -50 de­gree wind chill Sunday to watch the Pack­ers from the com­forts of their own home. But Cheese­heads’ hes­it­ance to brave the chilly con­fines of Lam­beau Field nearly cost fans in north­east­ern Wis­con­sin the chance to watch the game at all. Luck­ily for Green Bay fans, late tick­et sales made the game a sel­lout and aver­ted the NFL’s black­out threat.

But Pack­ers fans aren’t alone. Cin­cin­nati is also fa­cing the pos­sib­il­ity of a loc­al TV black­out, as the Bengals have un­til Fri­day af­ter­noon to sell out their game. In­di­ana­pol­is nar­rowly avoided a sim­il­ar fate when Meijer bought 1,200 tick­ets for loc­al mil­it­ary fam­il­ies. Black­outs are hardly new, but it’s un­usu­al for 75 per­cent of the week­end’s play­off host cit­ies to ap­proach the sel­lout dead­line with tick­ets still un­sold.

So what’s keep­ing fans from filling up the seats? The most ob­vi­ous an­swer is the in­creas­ing qual­ity of the TV ex­per­i­ence. The ad­vant­ages (and cost sav­ings) of watch­ing an HD broad­cast versus trav­el­ing to the sta­di­um have been well-doc­u­mented, but now there’s more evid­ence fans are shift­ing their view­ing habits. The NFL on FOX earned the most view­ers in its his­tory this sea­son; CBS grabbed its second-highest rat­ing ever.

But high TV view­er­ship might not be a threat to loc­al fans for much longer. Last month, the Fed­er­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion an­nounced it was start­ing the pro­cess to al­ter black­out rules. The pro­posed change would al­low cable and satel­lite pro­viders to carry games in blacked-out mar­kets, even if the NFL pre­vents over-the-air loc­al sta­tions from show­ing the broad­casts. Es­sen­tially, un­less you’re get­ting Green Bay’s WLUK Fox 11 from your an­tenna, you’ll be able to watch the game.

The FCC’s pro­posed work-around was praised by Sens. John Mc­Cain, R-Ar­iz., and Richard Blu­menth­al, D-Conn., who had put for­ward their own le­gis­la­tion to cut black­outs. With his con­stitu­ents in danger of miss­ing their Bengals, Sen. Sher­rod Brown, D-Ohio, chimed in Thursday to chas­tise the NFL. “This is un­ac­cept­able at a time when the price of at­tend­ing games con­tin­ues to rise, and the eco­nomy is not yet where it needs to be,” Brown said, call­ing the FCC’s rule change “ex­cel­lent news.”

But for now, black­outs are still a fact of life, and fans who choose to watch the game from home may be cost­ing them­selves the op­por­tun­ity to do just that.