One more year of forced purchase,then they lose my money forever. For this year and next I just sell them cheap on stub-hub ,so they don’t get to sell an extra seat. After that I get my deposit back,costs 4 times the amount of the deposit to buy these seats for this year and next,but forced to buy or be sued by them.

Still love the players and team, but management and owners suck.

1) PSLs were discussed as a means to finance the stadium. Tax payers stepped up and voted for a sales tax increase to fund the stadium. What did ownership do – charged a PSL anyway! GREED
2) Not only did they get the PSLs, but they also get money in the form on concessions and parking for all events at Ray Jay. Unbelievable for a publicly funded and maintained stadium. GREED
3) My first year in the new stadium tickets were $38 each. 9 years later they were $99 each. 1 year we got a 33% increase (at the beginning of the housing depression down here). GREED
4) While counting all of their money from the above mentioned money grab they decided not to spend any of it in free agency – they kept it all for themselves and their English soccer team. GREED

See a pattern here? Fans have learned that there are many other things to do on Sundays. The owners lead us down this path (and continue to with the black outs). They are the only ones to blame here. At some point the fans will return, but it may take a while. I gave up my season tickets when they quit spending money on players. I have gone to a couple of games since, but I’m not ready to start filling ownership’s pockets just yet.

All this is in a 1-9 season, imagine if they were playing well? You’d be looking at complete tarp removal, 80,000 attendance and overweight scalpers.

All of the Buc’s so-called fans can watch them in TV when they become the London Knights. At least the games won’t be blacked out then.

1:Team hasnt been a consistent winner since 2007-2008- and even then under the Gruden regime with the exception of those last 2 years they never had back to back winning years and didnt win a playoff game after the superbowl year of 2002. people havent been buying in especially with the “their winning with a last place schedule” BS reasoning that eniminates from some places.

2: Economy/money; people are getting better financially but it isnt all the way back here and there are more important things out there..when your state is in the top 5 in foreclosures, people arent gonna spend expendable income on high priced NFL tickets when they can watch at home or a bar in HDTV. remember THEY SOLD OUT FOR 11 years (1998-2008) because of mandatory 10 year PSL’S not necessarily because of die hard fans with plenty of $. plus theres a solid contingent of fans with the money that dont go and spend their time at the local casino ( now in the top 6 in the usa) or doing other activities that arent in a hot stadium, or paying for tickets that are overpriced ( regardless of price reduction) and as mentioned before the nosebleeds are the cheap tickets, and they are mostly sold out each week its the moderate to expensive tix in the lower bowl that fans cant and /or wont buy

3; rooting interest: florida and tampa especially is a bandwagon town thats filled with transients. if they get back to superbowl caliber ( they arent there yet however) then they will flood the bandwagon again.

4: The Owners- they have had a reputation of being quiet people who have a way of treating fans and certain people like crap- fired a popular coach like dungy and having him pack his stuff in the rain, threatening to move the team if they didnt get a new stadium in 95; firing gruden in a snap instance in 2008, allowing key personal people to leave in rather bad form, Rich Mckay, Doug Williams, Bruce Allen. and hiring and firing raheem morris without giving him a better chance to succeed/setting him up to fail ( mediocre drafts by the gm, no FA spending, picking some of his assistants who failed msiserbly- bates/jadogzynski)

plus after the salary cap hell under gruden they didnt spend much money in free agency which gave the impression that they cared about man u and not the bucs.

Im not giving Bucs/Rays fans a cover but we are a great sports town when the enviroment is strong or near perfect. just see our local tv and radio ratings for NFL and MLB when applicable; its just we’ve been shafted by either bad owners, bad/inconsistent teams, bad stadiums,and/ or a struggling economy all at the same. does that excuse the lousy crowds? of course not, are we the only place that have some of the same problems? prolly not.. but im willing to bet that in a comparable market (Not detroit, NYC, DALLAS BOSTON, LA) that our problems are unique.

Bucs have a great team. They could move to Kansas City – they don’t have a pro team, and fans that want to love a team.

And I never thought they were cheap. They just didn’t spend money when the team was rebuilding. Now that it’s getting close to competitive, they’re spending on free agents.

As for the attendance, sorry, but the economy down here still sucks horribly. I used to be a mortgage broker and had season tickets for fifteen years. Now I sell cell phones for a day job. I just can’t afford tickets anymore.

It was a game twice a year where it didn’t matter if either team was having a good year. Home field meant nothing. Either team could get smoked on any given Sunday.

The fans must be rebelling against the owner, I’ve NEVER heard anything good about him.

The Tampa-St. Pete market, which includes Orlando by the way, is huge. It is by no means a small market. The reason people don’t go is because early in the season it is too hot, and later in the season when people DO go they remember that most of Tampa is straight ghetto, so they don’t go back. Plus the price is still out of reach for many.

If I could afford to attend this game, I would absolutely be there, but the NFL has priced me out for years and the economy in the Tampa Bay area is still struggling to recover. I know I am not the only Bucs fan in this situation.

No offense to the die-hard Bucs fans, Rays fans, or to the people of Tampa Bay, but if your teams leave, don’t blame the owners.