I hope this guy succeeds. In most markets, blackouts are rare, but when they do happen, it's nothing more than a disgraceful power play and a relic of rules tha

I hope this guy succeeds. In most markets, blackouts are rare, but when they do happen, it's nothing more than a disgraceful power play and a relic of rules that were devised 40 years ago. The real crime is publicly financed stadiums. The tax-payer funded stadiums racket is usually driven by teams explicitly or implicitly threatening to move - the oldest and most effective trick in the book. A recent example was the half a billion dollars the Minnesota legislature coughed up to the keep the Vikings from (probably) leaving for L.A. Remember that the most popular and profitable American sports league doesn't even have a team in the second largest market (even though it used to have 2) and realize that the NFL will continue to be able to hold cities hostage under threat of relocation. Even the New York Yankees have tried it ( http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sports/features/2860/ http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sports/features/2860/ ) and ended up with over $200 million of public financing for New Yankees stadium if I remember correctly. Almost as if someone actually believed that they might become the New Jersey Yankees?? The most egregious recent example is the New Braves Stadium in Cobb county that was subsidized with around $300 million of taxpayer dollars by "tea-party conservative" Cobb county officials. All of this for a stadium that isn't even 20 years old...in a county that had to lay off around 200 teachers and furlough the rest. Not a bad business, if you're an owner in a North American sports league. The NHL is a different story for most markets, but owning an NFL or MLB team is unquestionably a license to print money. NBA owners love to plead poverty when the CBA is up, but the goddamn Milwaukee Bucks sold for over a half a billion and the wait line to buy an NBA is longer than ever.