The NFL and blackouts (that have nothing to do with concussions)

The United States was a simpler place forty years ago. The United States Postal Service had a monopoly on mail delivery, any questions you had could be answered by looking in an encyclopedia, and the only performance enhancing drugs athletes took were uppers. Oh, and football teams really wanted you to come to the games.

The threat of expansion of cable networks (remember when TBS and WGN were exotic?) led the Federal Communications Commission to promulgate a rule that allowed all major sports in America to prevent the broadcast or dissemination of the descriptions or accounts of a professional sports contest unless that game had been sold out 72 hours in advance. This was actually progress over prior rules, which had blocked the broadcast of local sporting events even if they had been sold out.

However, the FCC just voted 5-0 to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that says that they want to repeal the rule. The fact that this decision will have very little impact on the nature of sport fandom sort of proves just how antiquated the rule is in the first place.

Why the change of heart? The FCC Notice provides a detailed history of the blackout policy, which was a temporary law that expired in 1974 and was then perpetuated as an FCC rule in 1975. You have to remember that when baseball games were first broadcast on radio, some owners felt that if you gave away the games for free on the radio no one would go to see the games any more.  It never occurred to them that the radio broadcasts were free advertising for the games (a book titled Lords of the Realm nicely details the history of baseball owners being complete idiots; it didn't start with George Steinbrenner).  Initially even sold out football games were blacked out, which seems overkill.

But lest we dismiss these concerns too cavalierly, at one time NFL games not being 100% sold out was a more common fact of life. Yes, last year only one game was blacked out, but in 1974, before the current rule was adopted but statute enforced the policy, 59% of NFL games were blackout out on local television. However by 2011 only 16 games would be blacked out, and then only in four cities (Buffalo, Cincinnati, San Diego and Tampa).

In 1975 the FCC found that “[g]ate receipts are the primary source of revenues for some sports clubs,” a fact that is no longer true for the NFL. Testimony before the FCC established that gate receipts now account for a mere 20% of team revenues, while television revenues are three times more important at 60%. The sad fact is that in places like Tampa, they show the NFL Red Zone cable channel on their jumbotron, trying to lure fans to the stadium with the promise of televised highlights.

What is the NFL’s response to this seemingly reasonable acknowledgement of the evolution of NFL marketing? According to NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, “The NFL is the only sports league that televises every one of its games on free, over-the-air television. The FCC;s decision will not change that commitment for the foreseeable future”  That’s great. However, as I posted a few weeks ago, less than 10% of households still watch a TV set attached to an antenna, so that’s sort of irrelevant (and makes me wonder about the Monday Night game shown on ESPN). Second, the teams in the NFL play only 16 games per season, compared to 82 for basketball and 162 for baseball (to loosely quote great Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, “This isn't football; we do this every day.”). So the number of football games telecast is still paltry compared to the number of NBA and MLB games. Third, as pointed out in the FCC Notice, football is the only sport with an exclusive contract for network coverage of its games; baseball allows teams to make individual contracts with local broadcasters (that are NOT blacked out; the Commissioner’s office testified that MLB teams broadcast 151 out of 162 games per season).

So the NFL spokesman appears not to know what he’s talking about.  No surprise there.

What the NFL is saying is that it is committed to broadcasting all its games for free, and to do that it needs a rule blacking out the game if it isn't sold out. So, in order to make all games available, some games will have to be unavailable. That logic is similar to that of the US in the Vietnamese war when we said the only way to save a village was to destroy it.

Today, the blackout rule does seem to be a relic, given the NFL emphasis on TV revenues over gate receipts, and if it goes away not many people will notice. However, given how newer stadiums are emphasizing the TV presentation by installing bigger jumbotrons, and that many fans seem to prefer the home theater experience to paying high parking fees to pay large amounts for bad tickets at a stadium with limited replay, cut ins from other games, and (God help us) fantasy updates, maybe in the future the NFL will have increased difficulties selling out games. Instead of denying fans the chance to see the game, the NFL should try and find ways to make the stadium experience better.  Like lowering prices.