The L.A. Rams are poor. Their return to Los Angeles has been a huge success. The Rams will play the game at home after they beat the Buccaneers yesterday in a crazy game. It would be the best L.A. commute on record if they went to the Super Bowl.
There are two problems. The San Francisco 49ers haven't beaten them in over a year. The 49ers fans tend to overrun the home stadium of the Rams.
The team 383 miles to the north showed up and showed their fans at SoFi. Matthew Stafford threw the game-deciding intercept in overtime. It doesn't sound like Levi Stadium. It sounds like a park from 1994.
The Rams would prefer not to use a silent count in their own stadium, so they decided to take action in advance. The Rams did not allow tickets to be purchased using a credit card with a billing address outside of the Los Angeles area when they went on sale.
In the year 2022, the Rams think they will restrict access to ticket purchases. The new building wouldn't turn red on Championship Sunday if Bay Area residents weren't in the primary ticket market.
It is a noble effort by the Rams to try and preserve some semblance of home-field advantage, except for that whole resale market thing. The company logo used to be on the jerseys of the Philadelphia 76ers. You can buy tickets on the internet. If you are a 49ers fan expecting a large tax return, there are plenty of places to watch a game at a stadium that will be closer to your hotel than Levi Stadium is to your house.
The Rams have to pay a price in order to maximize profit. The NFL settled a five-decade standoff with Los Angeles over a new football stadium because it was tired of having no teams in America's second-largest media market. The Rams came back in 2016 after a 20-year absence from Southern California and a 35-year absence from Los Angeles County, while the Chargers came back the next season after leaving Los Angeles for San Diego.
The Rams are the 11th most valuable sports franchise in the world and they never could have been in St. Louis. The new media deals the NFL signed last spring are worth over $100 billion. The fan base in Los Angeles is not strong enough to sustain a resale market for tickets that start at over $500, so 49ers fans get to invade the Rams home stadium like a swarm of fire ants.
Kelly Stafford, the wife of Stafford, had already begged Rams fans not to sell their tickets to Arizona fans during the Wild-Card round, and the wife of Andrew Whitworth had also offered to buy Rams fans' resale tickets.
Joe Staley, a former 49ers offensive tackle, made the same offer, except that he said not to sell them to your own team. I think you will have a better chance at tickets being purchased by someone other than Staley.
Everyone on the Rams would be well served to work on their silent counts this week. Unless security checks IDs at the gate and anyone with an address north of Bakersfield is not allowed inside, the Niners faithful will be looking to party in L.A.
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