Indianapolis Colts Ease Blackout Fears after Revealing Sellout

The Indianapolis Colts have avoided a local TV blackout for their playoff game against Kansas City Chiefs after selling their remaining tickets for Saturday’s game.

They sold their allotted allocation after Meijer, a corporate sponsor, purchased the final 1,200 tickets to the Colts’ game and has donated them to local military families, the team said in a statement. 

The NFL has 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. The Colts were granted a extension yesterday by the NFL while the Cincinnati Bengals and Green Bay Packers still have Friday to meet the ticket-sale deadline extension from the NFL.

The Colts have now sold out 138 of their past 139 games.

The Packers were granted a second extension by the NFL on Thursday after they came up about 3,000 tickets short of selling out 80,750-seat Lambeau Field for Sunday’s NFC wild-card playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers.

A Packers spokesperson said the league gave them until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to sell the remaining tickets and avoid a television blackout in their home market, which includes both the Green Bay and Milwaukee areas.

The Packers began the week with 40,000 tickets available.

The Bengals have until 4 p.m. ET Friday to sell the remaining tickets to Sunday’s first-round AFC playoff game against the San Diego Chargers.

Late Thursday afternoon, there was no official word as to how many Bengals tickets were left. The team’s Twitter account accidentally floated the number 3,500 before being quickly deleted. Team officials later said they weren’t able to provide an exact figure, only noting that it was low enough for an extension to be granted.

Many of the Bengals tickets purchased Thursday came from local businesses that are planning to donate them to local military families. By the end of business Wednesday, Bengals director of sales and public affairs Jeff Berding said about 8,000 tickets remained.