The Los Angeles Rams made an effort to prevent San Francisco 49ers fans from taking over SoFi Stadium for the NFC Championship. That effort does not appear to have worked.
Citing projections from ticket resale site Vivid Seats, Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times suggested that the Rams’ efforts will be ineffective for Sunday’s game. The Rams attempted to prevent 49ers fans from buying tickets by restricting sales to those with a Los Angeles-area billing address, but Vivid Seats projects that 65 percent of those in the stadium will be rooting for the 49ers. Brett Goldberg, co-founder of secondary ticket marketplace TickPick, even suggested to Hernandez that the Rams’ efforts to block 49ers fans from attending may have only motivated them further.
“What we’ve been talking about internally is whether it actually adds fuel to the fire and motivates the opposing team and fan base to come,” Goldberg said.
The Rams never had much of a chance to succeed here. The Los Angeles area is home to plenty of 49ers fans, and the Rams cannot do anything about the secondary marketplace and ticket resales. The effort also attracted some criticism from one 49ers player, which only served to shed further light on the issue.
One can certainly understand why the Rams would want to limit the number of 49ers fans in attendance after how their season finale went. Doing it this way, however, may have just made the lack of home-field advantage a bigger talking point.
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