It’s official: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only NFL team that will have their Week 1 game blacked out. The game against the Detroit Lions didn’t sell out by last night’s deadline, so the Buccaneers will have yet another home game that local fans cannot watch. Talk about frustrating.
The Jacksonville Jaguars were in danger of having their first game blacked out as well, but their ownership stepped in and bought up the remaining tickets to the game. The Glazers declined to do so — although they did offer discounted $35 tickets to the game — continuing their practice from last season. Understandably, this has pissed a lot of people off.
With the blackout in place, I figure now’s a good time to remind everyone of an article we wrote a few weeks ago: “Are there ways around the NFL blackout?”
The short answer is, no. At least, there are no legal ways around the blackout. If you want to remain on the right side of the law — and keep your computer virus-free — your best bet is to wait and watch the game when it airs on Channel 10 late at night or to use NFL Rewind to watch the game afterward.
Of course, there is an illegal way of watching the Bucs live. One local Tampa pub circumvented the blackout last year by finding a sketchy online site that was streaming the game live, so it’s theoretically possible to find streams of the game.
The only trick is…yeah, these sites are illegal. And the streams are likely very poor quality. And the sites may or may not give you a virus. I wouldn’t recommend this strategy to anyone out there….but as that one bar showed, it can be done. You just have to be desperate enough to try it.
If you’re looking for a way to follow along with the game action that doesn’t involve computer viruses, give SB Nation Tampa Bay a follow on Twitter and/or Facebook. We’ll be providing live updates to the game as it happens, so while we can’t replace the awesomeness of watching the game live, we’ll try hard to be the next best thing.