Lewand on blackouts: Winning's the best sales pitch
The Lions are facing their first local TV blackout of the season for Sunday's home game against the Washington Redskins, with more than 10,000 tickets unsold as of Wednesday. And after a late sales push avoided a similar for the home opener against Minnesota, the question is when -- or if -- fans in southeast Michigan will be able to watch Lions games on TV again this season.
"We've got a lot of challenges, and our focus is trying to sell those games," team president Tom Lewand said Thursday. "But the most important focus is trying to win games. And there's no better way to sell tickets than to win."
The Lions are hardly the only team struggling to sell tickets in this economy. Oakland's home game against the Denver Broncos -- arguably the Raiders' biggest rival -- also is blacked out this weekend. Jacksonville's ownership has all but guaranteed a season-long blackout after a huge dropoff in season ticket sales. San Diego and Arizona barely avoided blackouts this week.
But the league has made some concessions that may help the Lions get at least a couple more sellouts, with defending Super Bowl champ Pittsburgh (Oct. 11) -- the epicenter of Steeler Nation is a 4 1/2-hour drive away -- and the Thanksgiving Day game against Green Bay (Nov. 26) the best bets. (The other games -- St. Louis, Cleveland, Arizona and a season-finale vs. Chicago -- seem more like long-shots at this point. And keep in mind, the Steelers game is scheduled for the same day as Game 3 of the ALDS at Comerica Park, assuming the Tigers hang on.)
The most notable change from the league office involves complimentary tickets. Previously, teams were forced to split their allotment of 17,000 comp tickets equally throughout a 10-game home schedule (including two preseason games), but now teams are allowed to use that allotment however and whenever they'd like.
"We didn't do that in the Minnesota game," Lewand said. "But we have the flexibility to do that."
Lewand won't say it, but I'd imagine the team will use those comp tickets to 1) ensure the Thanksgiving game is televised and 2) sell out the Steelers game. That flexibility is especially important now, since the days of advertisers or Fox 2 buying up remaining tickets are gone, as Lewand also acknowledged Thursday.
New rules also allow teams to attach promotions to tickets like the Lions' All-You-Can-Eat seats this season. But beyond that, filling the building falls back on the basics: the product and the marketing.
"We knew this one (vs. Washington) would be tough, because it's back-to-back home games, it's a team that was here last year ... and obviously there's a lot of things still going on in the fall while the weather's still nice and those types of things," Lewand said. "Our team of sales people have done a great job, and we're getting the word out. We've advertised more than we ever have before, we've had people working the phones and obviously they did a great job last week getting the Minnesota game sold out and the blackout lifted. And it's our hope that we can continue along those lines."
