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The NFL is facing an embarrassment of having three of their four playoff games failing to sell out, if current trends continue. The Indianapolis Colts announced that they still 4,500 tickets remaining. Despite having one extension for the New Year holiday, the Colts can still request another extension. The Green Bay Packers say that they have 5,500 remaining.
The Cincinnati Bengals haven't announce an update on Thursday; their last update had approximately 8,000 available on Wednesday afternoon. When we tried using Ticket Master Thursday morning, we couldn't obtain two tickets in the 100 or 200 sections, but there appears to be several remaining in the 300 sections on the sidelines and in the corners.
The Bengals were reportedly working with the NFL on an extension, which appears likely -- we can't see why the league would say no at this point, especially with the FCC proposing the completely removal of black outs entirely. However, extensions are primarily based on the promise that the tickets would sell, either through a commitment from a local company or the owner buying the rest at 34 cents on the dollar; the latter isn't available to owners in the playoffs.
In the end, it's all about cost. When we did a search on Ticket Master's website, the cheapest ticket (with service charge) was $96.25 per ticket. It seems that the NFL has over-estimated how much fans are willing to open their wallet with Christmas just passing.