BUY JAGS TICKETS!!!!!!!!!!!

[buckethead]

I've been a season tix holder for 7 years. I did not renew this year. I nearly lost our family home due to drastic a reduction in income, coupled with unwise allogations of funds during times of plenty.

I vowed to my wife I would not renew when we were making the decision to try and keep the only home our kids have known rather than sell.

I hope to be able to buy tickets again some day but for now I am soooo over it.

Life is a serious business.

[Shwaz]

The more I read the comments and excuses from the people of Jax the more obvious it is that we don't deserve a team. We just don't. 

Are you a football fan?  Were you one of the people in this town that hoped for a team for 2 decades until this town got a team? 

I am from NJ and and we have 2 NFL teams in the same stadium and do NOT take them for granted like this town does. 

I have jumped on the Jags bandwagon since I moved here two years ago and I am ashamed at how this town treats the team that THIS TOWN lobbied for for 2 decades to get.  Wake up people.  If this town loses the Jags, man, what will people think of this town?

The Jags are a business and there is no obligation to buy tickets and go to games, but I do not want to hear people complain if they leave.

Go Jags.  Win in Indy and these fans will come back.

Have you read anything before page 10 of this thread?

I am a fan and season ticket holder for 5 years.

Where are all those people that waited for 2 decades for the NFL?

Win or lose the fans shouldn't have gone anywhere... if the consensus is that the city can't support the team after 1 losing season... that city doesn't deserve a team.

[BridgeTroll]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=pasquarelli_len&id=4454313

Even NFL feels pinch of weak economy  By Len Pasquarelli

Tim Heitman/US Presswire

Jerry Jones has not been able to find a naming sponsor for the Cowboys' new billion-dollar stadium.

Not all that long ago, "marketing" an NFL franchise was an uncomplicated formula: Create the schedule, generate some media buzz around it, throw open the gates, sell out the stadium, kick off as close as possible to the appointed time and then count the receipts.

Not anymore.

Despite its preeminent status, the NFL has learned a difficult lesson from the current lagging economy: The league simply isn't recession-proof. While most fans still wait avidly for Sunday afternoons and Monday evenings, the average patron has to think twice about investing his dwindling disposable income in a football game.

It used to be taken for granted. Now it means taking away from something else to be able to afford an NFL ticket, and that something else might be more essential. It's hard for a person to worry about the line of scrimmage when he is fretting that his job on the assembly line could be gone tomorrow.

"I can't tell anybody it's more important to come see a football game than to go to work and try to make ends meet," Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end Reggie Hayward recently told the Florida Times-Union.

For the past few weeks, the national news has optimistically suggested that the economy is getting incrementally better. But that improvement has yet to trickle down to the NFL.

Earlier this offseason, commissioner Roger Goodell took a salary cut. There have been layoffs at the league and team levels. Several clubs have frozen ticket prices at the 2008 rates. Others, such as Jacksonville, are offering partial season-ticket plans. Many teams are struggling to sell luxury boxes and club seats.

Houston Texans owner Bob McNair said this summer that a season-ticket waiting list that once numbered 25,000 has been completely exhausted. About 17,000 season-ticket patrons in Jacksonville did not reup for the 2009 season. Several franchises are facing hometown blackouts just one season after all but nine of 256 regular-season games were aired in their local markets. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, once critical of the Cincinnati Bengals' Mike Brown for not selling the naming rights to Paul Brown Stadium, can't scare up a company to put its handle on his new billion-dollar football Taj Mahal. Advertisers who for years supported the NFL are rethinking their strategies and positions.

It once was a touchstone for companies to attach themselves to the NFL and its nonpareil brand name. But those companies are revisiting the viability of those decisions.

All of this comes amid concerns that there will not be a negotiated extension to the collective bargaining agreement, 2010 will be played as an uncapped season and owners will lock out players in 2011.

Those elements and a few others have combined to force the NFL, while still financially healthy, to market its product with greater gusto. The league that once sold itself now is finding that it is a much tougher sell.

In the ongoing tug of war for disposable income, the NFL must market itself harder than at any other point in the modern era. It's not enough to assume that every team will play in front of a full house or that its games will be piped into local households.

This is hardly a scientific study but one that is pretty reflective of the current situation: Twenty years ago, for the 1989 season, only half of the league's 28 clubs employed marketing directors, according to the NFL Record & Fact Book. For the 1999 campaign, using the same book as a reference source, all but one of the NFL's 31 franchises listed either a vice president of marketing, a senior vice president of marketing, a marketing executive, a director of marketing or a chief marketing officer.

For the 2009 season, the number surprisingly has dropped a bit, 28 of 32, but the implications are the same.

To the ticket-buying public, no matter how loyal or dyed-in-the-wool or familial, it's not enough anymore to simply stage the games. The matchups themselves used to be the primary hook that attracted sellout crowds. Now the NFL talks increasingly about the "Sunday experience." Go to a game, and you're apt to see a rock concert break out.

More than a game, the NFL has become entertainment, and that means it must compete intensely against an afternoon of golf, a day at the beach, attending a movie, perusing the stores at the mall, an hour at the gym, sipping coffee and reading the Sunday newspaper, and any number of other diversions.

A friend in the business once noted that newspapers are in such dire trouble because their owners are accustomed to making a ton of money and haven't yet figured out how to live on only a half-ton. That's not necessarily true of NFL owners, for whom none of us will be staging a telethon or passing the hat at halftime, but it's pertinent.

Even in good times, professional sports have never been particularly profitable business ventures. The profit margins traditionally are small, and a down economy shrinks the size of the bottom line even more.

According to The Washington Post, at least four franchises face the prospect of significant local blackouts this season. Since 2005, the NFL has broadcast 95 percent or more of its games to hometown markets. That could be a difficult threshold to reach in 2009.

The relative problems the NFL has encountered this year validate the reality that a rocky economy doesn't play any favorites.

Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver, who last month suggested that all eight of the team's home games might be blacked out locally, recently noted: "You know, it's a tough economy and we get it. … This economy has just affected too many families."

Clearly, it's had some effect on the league as well.

Len Pasquarelli, a recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's McCann Award for distinguished reporting, is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

[Shwaz]

Jerry Jones is a prick.

[reednavy]

Care to extrapolate?

[Shwaz]

Care to extrapolate?

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, once critical of the Cincinnati Bengals' Mike Brown for not selling the naming rights to Paul Brown Stadium

Jerry Jones is a hot topic right now as he is leading the charge to demolish the NFL as we know it. The current business model will cease to exist in 2010. With a player lockout on the horizon, he and the other big market teams will be fighting for the end of revenue sharing. Depending on how the business model changes is could either pool all the the big name talent to the bigger markets and even run the smaller markets out of business.

[buckethead]

The NFL has certain monopoly exemtions. Congress will get involved when smaller market fans unite and demand it. Jones knows that he is better off without that.

We'll get some rhetoric from him and his peers, but if he doesn't believe Congress will react when they get baraged by citizens demanding to see their home town franchises saved, as well as NFL/municipality stadium leases fufilled, he's dumber than your average billionaire.

[BridgeTroll]

He envisions himself the Steinbrenner of the NFL.  If the NFL reverts to the Baseball model it will effectively kill the sport.

[Shwaz]

He envisions himself the Steinbrenner of the NFL.  If the NFL reverts to the Baseball model it will effectively kill the sport.

It will be hard enough to farm talent let alone turn a profit with out revenue sharing. I can't imagine what a top 10 draft pick would cost with no salary cap. It will be impossible for a team like the Jags to afford a pick that high and possibly the 1st round altogether. 

[Shwaz]

Blackouts to be available on delay at NFL.com
September 10, 2009 10:41 AM

Posted by ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky

Jaguars fans unable to see the team’s homes games, which are expected to all be blacked out because they won’t be sold out, are getting a little relief from the league.

The NFL just announced that blacked out games will be available on a delayed basis in home markets on NFL.com.

Here’s the relevant piece of the league’s news release:
“…Games blacked out locally for failing to sell out 72 hours in advance will be available on NFL.com at no cost in the affected home markets.

“These free ‘re-broadcasts’ locally of blacked-out games will be available at NFL.com beginning at midnight on the day of the game and remain available for 72 hours (except during ESPN Monday Night Football telecasts).”

"'We understand that the economy is limiting some families and corporations from buying as many game tickets as they had previously,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “These free re-broadcasts on NFL.com will allow our fans that can’t get to a blacked-out game an opportunity to see the entire game.'"



This seems like a reasonable compromise from the league, which is unwavering on the blackout policy. It maintains the element of the system which forces those who really want to see the game as it’s played to buy a ticket.

Don’t buy one and you have to settle for highlights until midnight. But now you’ll be able to watch the whole game on your computer then if you want to.

[cdb]

He envisions himself the Steinbrenner of the NFL.  If the NFL reverts to the Baseball model it will effectively kill the sport.

It will be hard enough to farm talent let alone turn a profit with out revenue sharing. I can't imagine what a top 10 draft pick would cost with no salary cap. It will be impossible for a team like the Jags to afford a pick that high and possibly the 1st round altogether. 

Thats fine, we trade our top 10 pick for two later first round picks and we will be just fine. Its the free agent market we will have trouble competing in.

[Shwaz]

That's assuming the entire first round doesn't inflate out of control... which it most likely will.

[Keith-N-Jax]

I just bought a flex pack.You choose any three games pretty good deal.They said they have been getting some good responses

[Coolyfett]

Obviously the O-line was beyond terrible last yr...but signing Vick would have at least brought the Jags some attention and maybe some excitement.
I seriously think this is one of the most boring franchises around...I can't find excitement anywhere.

Do you see how the media is laughing at Terrell Owens & Allen Iverson? If Vick came to Jax it would hurt his come back. Its better for Vick to be in a bigger market that can deal with worldly things.

[aaapolito]

This Sunday it's go time at the stadium! Jags v. Cardinals at 1pm.  Buy tickets if you want to see a Jags win.  Go Jags.