The good news for the NFL is that, despite the lockout, the league somehow is ahead of its 2010 pace for selling season tickets. The bad news is that this gives the teams taking money away from non-player employees even less cause to continue to do so.
Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal reports that owners received the surprisingly positive information last week at the quarterly meetings in Indianapolis. The increase arose in part from an accelerated launch to the sales effort, given the looming lockout. In other words, “Let’s get the money now from the folks who don’t realize there may not be football this year.”
Either way, the development gives the teams that have laid off and/or furloughed and/or reduced pay even less cause to do so, and we hope that more teams will do what the Ravens did last week and reverse course.