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Good seats still available

Saints need to sell 11,000 tickets to avoid blackout

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Darrin Smith's INT return for a touchdown was the Saints' only score in the first three quarters of Sunday's loss. AP

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Whether the first playoff game for the New Orleans Saints in eight years would be shown on TV appeared to be coming down to the wire late Tuesday.

About 11,000 tickets remained with a 3 p.m. Wednesday deadline looming. If the game is not sold out by that time, the Saints would be able to apply with the NFL for a one day extension. Otherwise, no one in the New Orleans metropolitan area, which under NFL rules extends beyond Baton Rouge, would be able to watch the home playoff game on television without a satellite receiver.

"You'd like to be in a situation with your season ticket base where it's not a weekly event, that you know the tickets are bought and it doesn't happen like that," said Arnold Fielkow, Saints director of administration. "But when you're in a market where you only have 36,000 or so season tickets that means you've got about 28,000 tickets to sell each week and that makes it harder but hopefully our season-ticket base will expand next year as we move forward."

While the Saints have sold out seven of eight regular season home games, none were sold out more than a week in advance and some blackouts were lifted just prior to the NFL deadline of 72 hours before kickoff.

Sellouts do not necessarily help the Saints on the field. They've lost five of their seven sold-out home games.

 

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