The backlash ended up being too much for the Portland Trail Blazers. After previously announcing that the team’s TV and radio broadcasters would call road games remotely in the upcoming season, the team has now decided to let those crews travel.
“We’re going to put the team on the road. We’re going to travel the broadcasters, and we’re just excited to make sure fans have that experience, that our broadcasters to have that experience,” Dewayne Hankins, the team’s director of business operations, told Rip City Drive on Monday afternoon. “We would never want to do anything that is viewed, as this was, as something that was negative to the fan experience.”
He told hosts Chad Doing and Dwight Jaynes that the team is absolutely reacting to the backlash it received when the news of remote broadcasts first broke.
“We’ve heard you guys in the media, we’ve heard all the fans.”
The threat of Covid-19 has lessened with the availability of vaccines and general concern has subsided as fatigue around the pandemic sets in with fans. They were willing to tolerate one season of remote broadcasts. Some fan bases were willing to endure a second.
Since the beginning of 2022, fans have loudly objected to teams in multiple sports refusing to travel to away games.
