If you are a fan of any of the teams in the NFL playoffs who does not leave close to the area; you may have noticed it is hard to nearly impossible to get tickets to the game. That is because of a common dirty little practice that has gone on in the NFL. The Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks and others have been restricting ticket sales. Thus making it more difficult for fans of the visiting teams to get them and have an impact on the outcome of the game. The sale of the tickets all depend on what zip code you try to use. The Seattle Seahawks use of this practice for instance is in effect taking away sales from 49ers’ fans.
49ers fans that are not in the “right” zip code will have to depend on Stub-Hub or the NFL ticket exchange to get tickets. These are not the best places to get a fair deal. The prices on these 2nd market ticket stores are sometimes in the thousands. The Seahawks aren’t the only ones executing this scheme. Other teams in the NFL do it all the time. It is a common practice but has become a big PR problem for the NFL because there are only have 4 teams playing at the moment.
The Denver Broncos restricted AFC championship ticket sales to local billing addresses. That made some New England Patriots fans pretty upset. Restricting ticket sales to the locals is done as a way to get rid of that so called “12th man”. The 12th Man is that extra presence in the stands that supports the home team or in some cases with enough fans the away team. The noise these fans make can sometimes make it hard for the players to hear the plays being called. What these teams are doing is a sad and cheap trick to help them win. It takes away from the game.
The Seahawks said:
The reason wasn’t to limit residents of California. It was to stop large ticket brokerages from manipulating the onsale purchases through Ticketmaster and inflating the price on the secondary market.
The Broncos said:
After more than 96 percent of our season-ticket holders elected to purchase playoff tickets, we had an extremely limited inventory…. We wanted to ensure our local fans had an opportunity to purchase tickets.