Oakland Raiders Agree to 85 Percent Threshold for Ticket Sales

Stuart Kovacs – Aug 9, 2012

Throughout the entire offseason, there has been a great deal of attention on the downward trend of attendance in NFL games.

On June 30, the NFL announced that it would ease local television blackout rules in order to help teams sell out their home games.

In the past, teams had to sell 100 percent of their tickets in order to avoid blackouts in local television markets.

However, under the new guidelines, teams have the option to sell only 85 percent of their tickets and still have it count as a sell out. This will greatly decrease blackouts for teams who decide to follow these guidelines.

On Wednesday, the Oakland Raiders announced that they will adopt the 85 percent threshold option to televise games in their local markets, according to Paul Gutierrez of CSNBayArea.com.

With the Raiders only having to sell out 85 percent of their tickets, this makes it extremely likely that the fans of the Silver and Black will not have to sit through any blackouts during the 2012 season.

In reality, blackouts would be unlikely anyways as the team sold out every game during the 2011 campaign averaging 59,242 fans which was the team’s third-highest average crowd in 12 seasons.

This goes against a Wall Street Journal report indicating that NFL attendance is down 4.5 percent since the 2007 season.

However, the Raiders’ attendance over the past 17 years indicates that this is not the worst idea.

Over this time, the team has had 79 blackouts while having only 57 televised home games.

While most of the team’s blackouts occurred prior to 2010, it is better for the Raiders to be safe than sorry.   

The Raiders join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the only teams who have adopted the NFL’s 85 percent threshold rule thus far.

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