By Mark Curnutte
The Cincinnati Enquirer 

After failing to sell-out their last two home openers, the Bengals this afternoon announced that they have sold out Sunday's game against Denver at Paul Brown Stadium.

The Bengals beat the NFL's blackout deadline of 1 p.m. today, and the game will be televised live on WKRC-TV (Channel 12). Accounting procedures delayed the announcement until 4:50 p.m.

Channel 12's management has promised to purchase any remaining tickets.

The sellout is just the ninth in 25 games at the taxpayer-funded riverfront stadium.

All NFL teams received an additional 24 hours to beat the blackout this week because of the Labor Day holiday. Games normally have to sell-out 72 hours before kickoff to be shown live in the local television market - which for the Bengals encompasses Cincinnati, Dayton and Lexington, Ky.

The Bengals sold-out two games in 2000, the inaugural season - the Browns and Steelers.

In fact, the Browns and Steelers games sold-out in 2001 and 2002, and the Steelers game this season on Sept. 21 already is sold out.

The only previous non-Steelers/Browns sellouts came during the 2001 season, against the Bears and Titans.

First-year head coach Marvin Lewis has said that regaining a home-crowd advantage is an important part of rebuilding the team. The Bengals have a composite record of 12-36 since moving into the stadium, 8-16 at home.

The Bengals had total home attendance of 422,235 in 2002, the lowest in three years at Paul Brown Stadium and one of the smallest in the NFL.

The final three individual game crowds in 2002 were the smallest of the 24 games played at the stadium.

The Denver Broncos, the Bengals' opponent Sunday, in contrast, were fourth in the NFL in home attendance last year at 591,678.

E-mail mcurnutte@enquirer.com

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