Tampa Fans Take On NFL Blackouts
TAMPA (TheStreet) -- The National Football League's home-market television blackouts are about more than just football to Tampa's John E. Chaney Jr. He has one message for the NFL: Just show the game.
A semi-retired Air Force Veteran and father of two, Chaney started
last week as a last-ditch attempt to bring Tampa Bay Buccaneers games back to local television -- from which they've been absent during home games since the Bucs' Sept. 12 home opener. The NFL has blacked out the Buccaneers past four regular-season home games after the team failed to sell out
Raymond James
(RJF) - Get Report
Stadium 72 hours before kickoff in each instance, leading the Tampa Bay Bucs' director of communications, Jonathan Grella, to announce last month that at the Bucs likely won't sell out any of their home games this season.
NFL blackout rules have kept Tampa Bay Buccaneers home games off TV since the team's Sept. 12 home opener. |
That didn't sit well with Chaney, who lost his wife in 2006 when she died in active duty and has been raising his children on income from his small computer business and military benefits from his wife's death. He has seen the effects of Tampa's 12.4% unemployment rate -- higher than Florida's still-lofty 11.9% jobless mark and nearly 45% greater than the national average.
About 1.1 million Floridians are jobless, and those fortunate enough to be employed have seen the price of their homes fall more than $10,000 in a month and their neighbors unable to sell. Taking their NFL team off of television on top of everything else has only worsened the situation.
"The blackout rule is a great rule when people have money," Chaney says. "With this economy, nobody has money to go to the games, and blackouts just compound the problem."
Chaney had his first informal discussions with the Buccaneers' sales team last week and asked about the possibility of buying 30,000 tickets. He says the Buccaneers countered by saying they could only sell him 2,000 to 10,000, but would give him the group rate. Through his local church, Chaney partnered with the Lake Wales Care Center and reached an agreement that would give the charity all tickets bought through donations to Chaney's site. The Buccaneers gave Chaney a verbal agreement, but he's still waiting for documented authorization before he starts collecting money.
"I don't see the downside of this at all, but the fans are just so upset that they don't want to do anything at all," Chaney says. "The idea isn't to keep or resell the tickets, the idea is for the game to get aired."
Even that small goal will cost Chaney and his donors some big money. Despite a 2.9% price cut this season, Buccaneers tickets cost an average of $72.10 apiece, according to
. To meet his goal, Chaney's donors would have to cough up anywhere from $140,000 to $720,000 per game for the team's four remaining home games. Chaney had initially hoped that enough of his $1 million to $1.5 million goal could be reached in time to televise the Bucs' Nov. 14 home matchup against the Carolina Panthers. With donations coming in at a trickle and the Buccaneers yet to officially endorse his project, Chaney now believes selling out the Bucs' Week 15 matchup against the Detroit Lions and its season-ending home game against the Seattle Seahawks seems much more reasonable.
While grassroots fan groups are becoming a more popular answer to NFL Blackouts, organizations such as San Diego-based
Stop Charger Blackouts
have yet to keep a game on the air -- as Chargers fans discovered a week ago when their team suffered its third blackout of the season despite the group's efforts. That hasn't stopped Chaney, who so far has avoided large donors such as
Ford,
(F) - Get Report
Hess
( HESS) and
Coca-Cola
(K) - Get Report
-- which all sponsor the Bucs and can't be happy about the lack of exposure they're getting for their dollar -- and instead has sought donations and JustShowTheGame merchandise sales from the fans and businesses he believes are most affected by the blackouts.
"There were eight to 10 local sports bars that received letters from the NFL for showing games pirated off of the Internet," Chaney says. "Those will be the first people I'll go to."
-- Written by Jason Notte in Boston.
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>>Fans Take NFL Blackout Fight to FCC
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Jason Notte is a reporter for TheStreet.com. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Esquire.com, Time Out New York, the Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, Metro newspaper and the Colorado Springs Independent.
