Typically, the league grants a 24-hour extension of the deadline for selling all remaining non-premium tickets only when an assurance has been given that, if the tickets aren’t purchased by paying customers at 100 cents on the dollar, they’ll be purchased by the team (or its sponsors) at 34 cents on the dollar.
Though it’s unclear what specifically happened in Miami to sell 85 percent of the non-premium seats at Sun Life Stadium, the team has announced that “the number of tickets sold since an extension was granted on Thursday, September 20, 2012, now complies with the NFL requirements to telecast games locally.”
Chances are that owner Stephen Ross once again wrote a check for the remaining tickets. If that’s the case, here’s hoping that no one decided during the 24-hour period of false urgency that, instead of risking not seeing the game on local TV, they’d buy a ticket or two (or more) and attend it in person.