Blazers for Free

Brian Berger from Sports Business Radio posted a blog about Comcast and the Portland Trailblazers creating a new cable channel that will broadcast most of their games. Here is my response to the new Comcast/Blazer channel:

I am a huge Blazers fan. I watched almost every single game last year, but I never attended one in person. I was able to watch 75-80% of their games from the comfort of my couch and 54-inch TV thanks to FSN and KGW.

In recent years, I used to go to 10-15 home games a year. Like many fans, rising ticket prices and the actions of the "jail blazers" caused me to be reluctant to spend my money on this organization. Lucky for me, the Blazers started showing more and more games on cable, which I already paid for. It was like getting more Blazers for free!

I always wondered whether broadcasting all these games was a good thing for the Blazers organization. As a fan, they were keeping me satisfied, but I don't believe they were making as much money off of me as they could. They didn't receive my spending money, because I was getting "free" games on tv.

The press release says that 81 of the 82 games will be televised. Plus, a lot of them will be in high-def. Next year, I will be getting 98.7% of the games for "free," since I already pay for cable and do not consider this an extra cost to me. I am happy about this, because I love the NBA, and I love having a hometown team to root for. But it's looking like the Blazers, for the second year in a row, will not directly receive even a dollar from my wallet.