You remember how last year you rushed out at the last minute to rent that big screen TV so you could see football injuries bigger than life-size? And how difficult it was to get the TV through the door, and how sad it was when the truck came by a few months later to reposess it?

Well, maybe this year will be better.

The NFL has been in talks with National Amusements, the theatre chain operated by Shari Redstone, about piping live games into movie theatres. (Redstone, incidentally, is one of a handful of relatives not suing her father Sumner) According to the article in Reuters, the chain experiemented in 2004 with live Red Sox games; they sold hot dogs, peanuts, beer and even souveniers. They even encouraged the fans to cheer and act like fans, though I suppose they would have drawn the line at drunken brawling.

Declining ticket sales for movies meets potential expansion for live games? Who loses? Well, distributors potentially. However there is a business model in place already for screenings. Exhibitors pay a fee for making a movie go dark for the night and it’s usually more than the movie would normally make on that night. Everybody wins.

Oh yeah, except the repo man. If you see him at the game, buy him a beer.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 3:42 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.