The Raiders weren’t blacked out on television for any of their home games last season.
If a report from Paul Gutierrez of CSNBayArea.com is correct, there’s not much chance they’ll be blacked out this year either. Gutierrez reports that the Raiders have decided to take advantage of the new rule allowing teams to lower the blackout threshold to as low as 85 percent of their non-premium tickets. The Raiders have adopted that lower threshold, which cannot be changed during the season.
The move will make it easier for the Raiders to avoid blackouts, but stands to cost them money if they are able to get the same amount of people in the seats as they had last year. They sold out every one of their home games, finishing with an average attendance of 59,242 that was a sharp increase over the two previous seasons. Under the new rule, half of the revenue from every ticket sold after meeting the threshold will go to the visiting team as opposed to 34 cents on each dollar if you keep things at 100 percent.
The Buccaneers are the only other team to take advantage of the new rule for this season. Unlike the Raiders, their games were regularly blacked out last season.
