NFL Attendance Down (Or Yet Another Reason why the Economy is not in Recovery)

As the NFL approaches this season in the midst of an economic downturn, teams are failing to sell out their games. So as a result, television blackouts are looming. A blackout, in NFL terms, happens when a home team fails to sell out their game 72 hours beforehand. As a result, their own hometown fans cannot see the game unless they are actually in the stadium.

This in no way affects me, as I have never followed football (and haven't followed any professional sport in general for many years), but do find it interesting in that football is one of those American institutions that the average person just goes nuts over. It says something when a lot of people are unable or unwilling to fork over their diminished reserves of money to attend a game.

Here is an interesting discussion from the LATOC forum on the future of professional sports after PO. I think the major organizations (MLB, NFL, etc.) will probably survive, but not in the same form. You will have much smaller stadiums, the players will be making much less, games might have to be played in the daytime, etc. In other words, a contraction back to how sports was at the beginning of the past century, which is not entirely a bad thing. If that were to happen, I'd gladly go back into the fold.