This issue is complicated in a few ways, and not so much in others. First, the last game vs. the 49ers was a regular season game and those 49er fans purchased those tickets when the schedule came out. Also the notion that there is something lacking in the Los Angeles Rams fan based is just ridiculous. Anyone whose been to the games at SoFi this season...particularly last week...sees that there is no problem filling that stadium with Ram fans. It's been that way since we've returned. The couple of times that there were a lot of visiting fans were regular season games vs. fanbases that travel where those fans purchased their tickets in August for the most part.
The other issue is that the cost of SSLs and season tickets makes it a practical matter for some fans to recoup some of their expenses by selling tickets to some games. Some people who aren't necessarily Ram fans purchased SSLs just to resale the tickets to make a profit. It happens. My seats are listed on the resale market for almost $2,000 right now. They could be $200,000 and I wouldn't sell them because I've been a Rams fan for 45 years and the opportunity to see us play in SoFi in the NFC title game vs. the 49ers is a priceless opportunity for me. But I'm not about to be critical of people who would sell their tickets knowing the cost of having season tickets.
There is a solution. There needs to be an efficient way for Ram fans who sell their tickets to some games to only sell them to Ram fans. It's standard business that the most efficient way to do something will be the most popular way to do something. It's efficient to put tickets up for resale, so a process that limits the purchasing to Ram fans only would have to be efficient to be successful. I'm all for what ticketmaster or whomever did with their zip code limitations. It's not the first time that's happened, and I'm all for it. But that's not a long term solution. The NFL was without a Los Angeles team for 20 years and there are a lot of younger 49er fans in the LA area so a zip code limitation will not thwart all of them. Nor should it thwart all of them, as a person who rooted for a team in a different city for 20 years, that type of limitation shouldn't keep out all fans of visiting teams.
The answer is some sort of zip code limitation along with an efficient way to ensure that people reselling tickets are selling them to verified Ram fans. There's a way to do it, and hopefully it can be implemented sooner rather than later.