It's definitely NOT 250 miles... it's "local," which I believe means 75 miles. 250... yeah I'm pretty sure people in NYC don't care if the Baltimore game is blacked out (187 miles away).
Since 1973, the NFL has maintained a blackout policy that states that a home game cannot be televised locally if it is not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time. Prior to 1973, all games were blacked out in the home city of origin regardless of whether they were sold out. This policy, dating back to the NFL's emerging television years, resulted in home-city blackouts even during championship games. For instance, the 1958
"Greatest Game Ever Played" between the
Baltimore Colts and
New York Giants was unavailable to New York fans despite the sellout. Similarly, all Super Bowl games prior to
the seventh edition were unavailable in the host city's market.
Although that policy was successfully defended in court numerous times, Congress passed legislation requiring the NFL to impose the 72-hour deadline (see above). The league will sometimes change this deadline to 48 hours if there are only a few thousand tickets left unsold; much more rarely, they will occasionally extend this to 24 hours in special cases.
[18]
Alternatively, some NFL teams have arrangements with local television stations or businesses to buy up unsold tickets. Tickets in premium
club sections have been excluded from the blackout rule in past years, as have unused tickets allocated to the visiting team. The
Jacksonville Jaguars have even gone further and closed off a number of sections at their home
EverBank Field to reduce the number of tickets they would need to sell. Everbank Field is one of the largest in the NFL, as it was built to also accommodate the annual
Florida-Georgia game and
Gator Bowl and was expanded for
Super Bowl XXXIX even though it draws from one of the smallest markets in the league. The NFL requires that closing off sections be done uniformly for every home game, including playoff games, in a given season. This prevents teams from trying to sell out the entire stadium only when they expect to be able to do so.
This is per Wikipedia..take for what its worth..
I am more than 75 miles away from Buffalo but when Buff does not sell out, the game gets blacked out because the Syracuse Market runs near Rochester which is closer to Buffalo..
It has to do with various TV markets more than staright up Miles in distance..
Since New York city would not carry Baltimore games anyway it does not apply in that case.
