On Tuesday night, the Chiefs announced that 3,500 non-premium seats remain for Sunday’s home game against the Bills. Failure to sell those tickets by Thursday at 1:00 p.m. ET would trigger the first local blackout of a Chiefs game since December 1990.
We assumed at the time that the local CBS affiliate, KCTV, would step up and buy a chunk of the seats in order to ensure that the game would be televised locally.
As it turns out, 3,500 remained even after KCTV wrote its check.
“From my perspective, and KCTV, we certainly don’t want to lose a
Chiefs game and the audience it brings,” Robert Tosch, vice president and General Manager of KCTV, told the Randy Covitz of the Kansas City Star. “We’ve helped them as much as we
can. As unfortunate as it is, there is only so much folks can do. The
underlying problem is the economy. If the Chiefs had a better record,
and the weather was better and the economy was better, you’d probably
see the streak continue.”
Even if the Chiefs find a way to sell the rest of the unsold tickets, Covitz points out that the string of 155 straight sellouts will be ending soon.
Next weekend, the Browns come to town.
Naturally, *any* PFT story that mentions the Browns can’t do so without taking a backhanded slap at them.
So What!!
assuming there are 3500 upper level seats available, they range from around 35 to 70 bucks. Hard to imagine a team this far under the cap doesn’t have 150-200K extra to write the check to Buffalo???
talk about beating down your fan base….
What team does PFT not take back-handed slaps at? Stop being so sensitive.
Everybody has heard of the salary cap but there is also a salary floor. The Chiefs have barely made the salary floor. With the exception of 6 winning years in the early 90′s and 3 years under Vermeil in the 2000′s, this organization has been Clipper-esque in their futility for 40 years. Lamar Hunt got a complete free pass because he was portrayed as a gentile old man that you can’t criticize. These owners are going to kill the golden goose. They have priced the tickets out of range for their most passionate fans. The Chiefs are among the worst of the culprits and now they got the perfect storm on their hands. They’ve kept raising prices despite being awful. Next season their refurbished stadium (taxpayer funded because dumb ass Jackson County voters approved it, believing the Chiefs scare-tactics) will be done and they will really raise the ticket prices in this economy and despite the fact they will suck for the foreseeable future. The GREED of NFL owners knows no bounds and they are on their way to becoming the MLB.
newbaum turk +1
The NFL is entertaining, but not entertaining enough to pay that much per ticket. I think the NFL is hurting themselves by charging so much money for tickets, and force fans to buy two games if they want to see specific games.
I’ve seen this coming for a while, the chiefs have some of the highest ticket prices in the league, and one of the worst teams in the league. Maybe this will open ownerships eyes – oh wait – our owner lives in fiji… crap…
The Bills and the Browns have a way of killing an audience and reducing revenue.
So these guys haven’t had a blackout since I was born (born December 1990). . .wow. That’s dedication.
chemicalxv – and we won’t have one this weekend either. You wait and see this game will be sold out. If nothing else a corporation will pick up the slack from our usually dedicated fans.
I hate to say I told you so… but…
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/12/11/chiefs-avoid-local-tv-blackout/