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NFL To Suspend TV Blackout Rule For 2015 Season

NEW YORK (CBS SF) -- The National Football League will not blackout any games from local TV markets during the 2015 season.

The league announced Monday a one-year suspension of the policy that blocked games in markets where the local team had not sold out the stadium, designed to boost tickets sales - in theory.

The NFL said the one-year suspension of the policy would apply to both preseason and regular season games. The rule was triggered when when teams did not sell out 85 percent of their seats for a home game within 72 hours of kickoff.

Last September, the Federal Communications Commission voted to eliminate the NFL blackout rule, but it remained on the books despite the ruling. Last season there were no blackouts because the minimum number of tickets to avoid blackouts were sold for every game and only two blackouts in 2013, according to the league.

Before the blackout rule was relaxed in 2012 to selling 85% of a team's stadium capacity, several teams such as the Oakland Raiders, Jacksonvilles Jaguars and San Diego Chargers would periodically have home games blocked in local markets.

From 1995 to 2012, more than half of all Raiders home games were blacked out. Beginning in 2013, the Raiders began blocking off some 10,000 seats in the uppermost sections of the east-side third deck at O.co Coliseum - derisively known as 'Mount Davis' - in an effort to avoid blackouts.

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