[sportscurmudgeon]

Matty and SkinsnCanes:

The Redskins have what are known in the TV business as sell outs which means that the local stations can carry the games without a waiver from the Skins ownership. If they did not sell out those seats, they could not televise home games here. HOWEVER there is a technicality here in the TV contracts.

Premium seats (Club level and Luxury Suites) are not counted in terms of sell outs. The seats that count are the ones that are not "premium seats". So the Redskin games are sellouts.

But there are seats that are not filled because the tix are not sold. About those club seats you have SkinsnCanes, can I just walk up to the ticket booth and buy one for a random game in November? No I can't. Those are sold only by subscription meaning season tickets for a fixed period of time. And that is why there are always empty yellow seats. Even if every ticket holder went to sit down and actually - you know - watch the game on the field, there would be yellow seats showing.

Even with all that, Fewd Ex holds more than 90,000 people and I believe the next largest field is Giants Stadium at 78,500.

Some teams play in really small stadiums - and don't fill even the small ones. Jacksonville has under 60,000 seats and will "cover over" about 10,000 next year so that it does not look so embarrassing on TV when visiting teams televise theri games at JAX back to the home area. Atlanta had one sell out for sure this year and I BELIEVE that the rest of their home games had unsold seats and would have been blacked out in Atlanta but owner Arthur Blank gave the local stations the OK to do the Falcons' games because he sees local TV as a marketing tool.

You've heard about how great "Raider Nation" is? Well, prior to this year, Oakland had had 3 sell outs in the previous 2 seasons and in their final game this year on Sunday, they had 41,000 in the seats. Of course, Al Davis blacks out the games locally if even one seat is unsold...