Talking Points: So-called ‘Sellouts’

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What constitutes a sellout of a facility for an event?

Is it when tickets are sold for every seat?

Or just the seats that the team feels like selling?

The Portland Winterhawks had a great season and are having a great postseason. Talking Points is not trying to take away from anything the team achieved on the ice. We’re just wondering about the seats around the ice.

The Winterhawks have been trumpeting their three so-called “sellouts” of the Rose Garden for their three games of the Western Hockey League finals.

That sounds fantastic — until one realizes that fewer than half of the seats in the Rose Garden were actually sold for those games, with black curtains draped over the seats farthest from the ice. Those seats are good enough to watch a basketball game from, apparently, so why not a hockey game?

It would appear as if the Winterhawks franchise is more interested in bragging about farcical sellouts than it is in, you know, selling tickets to fans who would be willing to buy them.

Of course it’s quite unlikely that the entire building would sell out for a game. Does that mean that it’s better to have fewer than 11,000 fans plus curtains covering that many seats than it would be to have a few more fans cheering for the Winterhawks with a few empty sections in the nosebleed seats?

Just wondering.

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Football rules on TV this morning. English Premier League football, that is. Today marks the first time that all 10 EPL matches of the day will be televised live in the United States. Manchester City plays Queens Park Rangers, with a win likely wrapping up the league title on ESPN2.

The other nine matches will be televised on Fox networks.

All matches kick off at 7 a.m.