09-07-2010, 06:14 PM
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PatsFans.com Supporter
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Neither Jets or Giants May Sell Out New Stadium Openers
From yesterday's NY Post:
Neither the Giants nor the Jets will be blacked out on local TV in Week 1, but there sure are going to be a lot of empty seats at New Meadowlands Stadium.
The Giants say they have sold all non-premium seating for Sunday’s opener against the Panthers, meaning the game will be broadcast locally. But the club admitted yesterday that around 1,200 club seats requiring a PSL remain unsold.
The Jets, meanwhile, are in even worse shape sales-wise for their opener next Monday night against the Ravens, with more than 1,500 non-premium seats still available in the lower sections of their new 82,500-seat home despite a recent 50-percent slash in the price of the required PSL.
That normally would put a team in danger of a local TV blackout, which the Jets haven’t endured since 1977, but the team said yesterday that there is “no chance” the Baltimore game will be blacked out.
That’s because owner Woody Johnson can spend the money to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The Jets can take advantage of a loophole in the NFL’s blackout policy that allows team owners to get their games on local TV by buying up any unsold non-premium seats for 34 cents on the dollar.
If the number of unsold non-premium PSL seats remains unchanged, that means owner Woody Johnson would have to write a check of $100,000 or more for each of the eight homes game this season just to avoid the blackout.
“We do not have to inform the league until 72 hours prior to kickoff whether or not we are blacked out, but as we have said, we will be sold out, and there is no chance of a blackout,” Jets spokesman Bruce Speight said yesterday in an e-mail.
Those tickets the team buys can then be donated to charity or to the military, as the Jaguars have done this season and in previous years.
Though both games will be on local TV, the potential for bigger stretches of empty gray seats Sunday and Monday is high when the secondary ticket market is included.
As of yesterday, there were a combined 12,100 seats for resale online to the Giants-Panthers game and a combined 12,400 tickets for resale online for the Jets-Ravens contest, according to ticket aggregator Fansnap.com.
The Giants and Jets also have several thousand unsold tickets for games later in the season after each team quietly put single-game seats on sale late last month. The Giants angered some of their fans by dropping the longstanding PSL requirement on those seats.
Read more: Jets owner will buy tickets to avert blackout - NYPOST.com |
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Re: Neither Jets or Giants May Sell Out New Stadium Openers
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