Fans purchase remaining Cardinals tickets
January 3
Arizona Republic
"The Arizona Cardinals' playoff game this afternoon will be televised locally.
It almost didn't happen.
Cardinals fans and the team itself were on edge Friday, waiting to see if the game would sell out.
NFL rules prohibit televising a game locally unless all tickets are sold. No sellout, and the game would not have been on TV anywhere closer than Yuma.
The league twice extended the team's deadline to sell out, but 2,400 tickets still remained unsold Friday morning. The last ones sold right before the final deadline of 2:30 p.m.
"We sold thousands of tickets in the last 48 hours," said Mark Dalton, Cardinals vice president for media relations. "Thank God for the fans."
The game will be the Cardinals' first postseason appearance in 10 years and their first home playoff game since 1947, when they played in Chicago. They later moved to St. Louis and then, in 1988, moved to Arizona.
After selling out three seasons' worth of home games - even preseason games - since the Cardinals moved into their new stadium in Glendale, the team was nearly a victim of local apathy and a troubled economy.
"Tickets went on sale right at the holidays, in a very bad economy," said fan Rick DeGraw, 62, of Phoenix. "Just bad timing."
Michael Edwards, a fan of the team since 1947, thinks the Cardinals were nearly done in by a combination of factors.
"The economy, the ticket prices, the feeling that the Cardinals will be a one-and-done team," Edwards said from his home in Surprise.
It's not just in Arizona. The National Football League is feeling the pinch elsewhere.
Of the four wild-card playoff games this weekend, only the one in Miami sold out immediately. The game in San Diego sold out Wednesday.
The fourth game, hosted by the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, still had not sold out by Friday evening. The deadline for that game is 2:30 p.m. Arizona time today.
The league reduced the prices of playoff tickets in anticipation of having a difficult time selling them. Still, they are expensive. On Friday, the cheapest Cardinals seat available was $54.75."
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