NFL Season Opens and Blackouts Loom

Sept. 13, 2009— -- The 2009 NFL season is barely under way, but it's already been filled with drama. Not by what's happening on the field, but by what's taking place in the stands.

In city after city, fans have been sweating it out, hoping the seats sell out so the games will not be blacked out on local television.

For years pro football has only known prosperity. But even the NFL cannot outrun the nation's worst economy in decades.

"People's incomes are down, and the teams are having difficulty selling all their tickets," says Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College.

Under the NFL's so-called blackout rule, a game that is not sold out within 72 hours of kickoff cannot be televised locally.

Last season, only three teams -- Oakland, Detroit and St. Louis -- did not sell out all their home games, and just nine of the NFL's 256 regular-season games were not broadcast locally.

But with the economy reeling, it is projected that as many as 12 of the NFL's 32 teams might not sell out all their home games this season. The NFL acknowledges that some 50 games might be blacked out locally, although it calls this a worst-case scenario.

No season-opener has been blacked out in five years, but last week the NFL had to give at least three teams -- Cincinnati, Oakland and Arizona -- an extra 24 hours to try to sell their remaining inventory of tickets in hopes their opening games would be shown locally.

In Cincinnati, a blackout was averted only after a supermarket chain and the local CBS affiliate stepped in and bought seats -- keeping alive a home sellout streak that dates to November 2003.

Arizona also managed to avoid a blackout, by unloading 1,700 tickets to meet the NFL's relaxed deadline. It was not immediately clear whether fans purchased those seats, or whether one or more local companies swooped in to buy them.

But unlike Oakland and Cincinnati, teams that struggled in 2008, disheartening their fans, Arizona enjoyed a magical season last year that culminated with an appearance in the Super Bowl.