How bad is the economic situation in the country right now? So bad, that both NFC playoff games this weekend are currently not sold out and may be blacked out in their respective home regions. That’s just a tad bit embarrassing. Especially considering that the Cardinals have never hosted a playoff game since the team moved to Phoenix.
Things are even worse in Minnesota, where 8,000 tickets were still available as of noon today, and no corporate sponsors have lined up to buy tickets to avoid a blackout, which will happen if the game isn’t sold out by 3:30 p.m. tomorrow. The lesson here? If you don’t have the money to buy tickets, live as far away from your favorite NFL team as possible.
According to the ARIZONA REPUBLIC, there are about 3,700 seats available for the Cards-Falcons tilt on Saturday. The NFL extended the deadline for avoiding a blackout from today:
“Based on the activity we’ve seen over the last couple days and particularly in the last 24 hours we’re very optimistic that this extension will get us where we need to be,” said Ron Minegar, the team’s Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer.
All 30 previous games played at University of Phoenix Stadium have been sold out.
As for the Vikings, things are looking pretty bleak there. Minnesotans are probably faced with driving to Green Bay if they don’t want to cough up the cash to go to the Metrodome. The PIONEER PRESS’ Rick Alonzo isn‘t holding out much hope for the Vikes-Eagles finding its way onto the airwaves:
Vikings vice president of sales and marketing Steve LaCroix said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the game will sell out. LaCroix said that he’s not aware of any Vikings playoff games that were ever blacked out.
LaCroix said that the blackout would extend well beyond the Twin Cities market, perhaps as far away as two hours of driving distance to other cities because of the way the TV markets are defined.
Earlier in the season, media outlets were clowning on the Lions for having trouble selling out their annual Thanksgiving game, and that was for the worst team ever. These are playoff games we’re talking about now. It’s quite an embarrassment for the NFL and these two teams, which aren’t exactly accustomed to hosting such important games.
9:36 pm on January 1st, 2009
Maybe they're waiting for the new Vikings stadium to be built.
10:13 pm on January 1st, 2009
Please avoid making the bad economy the all-purpose excuse. San Diego and Miami (and Phoenix, for that matter) have considerably worse economies than the Twin Cities does, and have less corporate entities to bail them out of NFL blackout jams. They had no problems selling out for their games, from what we can tell.
I find it extremely hard to believe that the home offices of Target, Best Buy, USBank, and Wells Fargo (companies that are BENEFITING from the current downturn) won't kick in around $600K for 8000 tickets. If the Twin Cities is blacked out for this game, Roger Goodell needs to force Zygi Wilf to fire the entire sales/marketing staff for doing such an unspeakably bad job.
10:24 pm on January 1st, 2009
The Cardinals front office claims that they are 3,500 tickets short from a sell-out/blackout.
I'll be listening to the game on radio anyway. NFL on Sirius FTW!!!
10:31 pm on January 1st, 2009
I can sort of understand the Vikings' problem, since they play in such a crappy stadium. But the Cardinals are in a brand-new state-of-the-art facility. So the same fans that are willing to shell out thousands for PSLs can't scrape together a few hundred more for the first-ever home playoff game in Phoenix?
6:20 am on January 2nd, 2009
Its the economy….not crappy stadiums or other things. Most regular season tixs were sold earlier in 2008, before the economy really tanked. Now, people just do not have the money to pony up for playoff tixs.
The NFL should exempt these cities from the blackout rule for these wild card games
5:50 pm on January 2nd, 2009
Attention Cardinals fans!! The Cardinals have sold out their game on Saturday!!! All five of you rejoice!!