Tampa Bay Fans Alone in their Misery

Tampa Bay Fans Alone in their Misery

Despite still having their playoff hopes alive, and a respectable 9-6 record for the season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only team in the NFL to still have their home games blacked out. Tampa improved their record on Sunday by beating the Seattle Seahawks at home, but unless they actually went to the game, Buccaneer fans could only watch highlights of follow the game on local radio stations.

Based on the NFL’s rules a game must sell out all tickets at least 72 hours prior to kick-off in order to be televised in the local market. For Tampa Bay this would require the sale of 65,890 seats. The closest the team came to meeting this number was in its second regular season game this year against Pittsburg when they came up about 8300 sales short.

The owners of the Buccaneer organization, the Glazer family, have the ability to avoid the blackout by purchasing any unsold tickets. While the Glazier’s, like many other team owners, have done this in past years, they have opted not to do it this year.