FOR USE AS DESIRED
ALL NFL GAMES SELL OUT; ALL LOCAL BLACKOUTS LIFTED
For only the fifth time ever, the NFL has sold out all games in advance of the
local TV blackout deadline this weekend, enabling the 15 games of Week 11 to be
televised in the home-team market, the NFL announced today.
Games in Buffalo, Carolina, Indianapolis, Jacksonville and Philadelphia became sellouts today after receiving one-day extensions due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Two sold-out games were played on Thanksgiving Day – Green Bay at Detroit and Denver at Dallas.
This is the first time this year that all local blackouts were lifted on a weekend due to games being sold out in advance.
All blackouts for the weekend of September 23-24 were lifted by the NFL, even though all games were not sold out in advance, when NFL play resumed after a one-week postponement following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Blackouts have been lifted for all games on a single weekend as a result of all games selling out four times previously in NFL history since the blackout policy took effect in 1973 – on September 6-7, 1998; and three times in 2000 -- on November 12-13, November 19-20, and December 10-11.
The NFL blackout policy states that all games sold out in advance of a 72-hour deadline prior to kickoff be televised in the home city. All NFL games have been televised in the visiting team’s market since 1962.