Blumenthal: Moratorium on NFL blackouts a victory for fans

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The camera-friendly persona of U.S. Sen Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is apparently rubbing off on the National Football League.

On Monday, team owners voted to suspend the league’s controversial television blackout policy for the 2015 season, capitulating to fans and members of Congress such as Blumenthal who had introduced legislation that could threaten the NFL’s business model.

For home games to be broadcast in local television markets, 85 percent of the tickets must be sold under the policy, which up until 2012 had required teams to sellout stadiums 72 hours before kickoff.

“This decision is a huge historic victory for tens of millions of fans and consumers across the country,” Blumenthal told Hearst Connecticut Media. “We’re one step closer to completely eliminating this anti-fan reprehensible measure for all time.”

The moratorium on blackouts coincides with an effort by Blumenthal and fellow Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to get Congress to re-examine the NFL’s longstanding federal anti-trust exemption, which allows teams to collaborate in the negotiation of billion-dollar sponsorships and other deals. In 2013, the Senate colleagues introduced the Furthering Access and Networks for Sports (FANS) Act, which called on the NFL to abandon its blackout policy.

“I think the owners are showing enlightened self interest and perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall in my propoposal to suspend the anti-trust exemption,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal’s critics have said that the popularity of sports bars and out-of-market sports packages such as Sunday Ticket on DirecTV make it easy for just about every fan to see the games they want to watch.

In 2014, there were no blackouts. The previous year, games in Buffalo and San Diego were blacked-out.

The last time the New York Giants and Jets had a game blacked out was 1975 and 1977, respectively. The New England Patriots had their last blackout in 1993.

“Richard, pipe down,” Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo, a sports talk channel host on SiriusXM Satellite Radio and New Canaan resident, said in a December interview with Hearst. “You don’t have to worry about blackouts in Connecticut, dope. There’s a million games on.”

While just a handful of games have been blacked out in recent years, the Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts and Cincinnati Bengals were in danger of having their home playoff games blacked out in January 2014 until local businesses bought the unsold tickets.

A frequent critic of the NFL on a host of issues ranging from television blackouts to the league’s efforts to curb domestic violence, Blumenthal said that while the moratorium is a significant first step, the anti-trust exemption legislation remains on the table.

“It’s not the end game for all the issues that have been raised,” Blumenthal said.

Neil Vigdor