The Lions’ home opener will be on TV in Detroit.
A day after saying that 2,000 tickets still needed to be sold, the team announced today that the game against the Eagles is a sellout, which means it can be televised live on the Fox affiliates in Detroit, Lansing, Saginaw and Toledo.
Last year the Lions had four sellouts and four blackouts. Their next home game, October 10 against the Rams, looks like a likely blackout.
To get the game against the Eagles on local TV, the Lions may have taken advantage of the rule that allows the team to buy up unsold tickets at 34 percent of the ticket price. There’s really no way of knowing how many tickets were actually sold and how many the team ate, but it’s probably safe to assume we’ll see more than a few empty seats on Sunday at Ford Field.
And although the game is technically considered a sellout, there are still tickets available from the allotment to the Eagles that went unsold. Tickets allotted to the road team don’t count toward blackout numbers.