LA Rams Tops In NFL In Ticket Revenue In 2016

The Los Angeles Business Journal’s Daniel Kaplan is reporting that the Los Angeles Rams were the top contributor to the NFL’s ticket revenue pool meaning they took in more revenue than any other team in 2016.

The team in 2016 was the top contributor to the shared pool of ticket revenue among the 32 clubs. The team contributed $27 million to the pool, said a source who provided some of the internal league rankings.

Teams contribute one-third of their ticket revenue to the shared pool, which would put the Rams’ ticket revenue in the neighborhood of $80 million. The shared revenue is evenly divided among the league’s 32 teams.

The Rams were second in the NFL in total home attendance in 2016 with 665,318 attendees behind just the Dallas Cowboys who brought in 740,318 in Arlington, though attendance isn’t a direct output of sales. There were plenty of empty patches

The reasons why are obvious. A huge market, regional upper class economic strength and the pent up demand after two-plus decades of the NFL’s absence from the market.

The question is sustainability.

As Kaplan continued:

The Rams had empty seats as the club flailed to a 4-12 finish, but those seats were still sold. The team took advantage of the heady days in the aftermath of the January 2016 relocation vote to sell 70,000 season tickets to the coliseum (the club also had 10,000 tickets a game available for walk-up sales).

The team’s policy putting coliseum ticket holders first in line for seats at the new stadium, scheduled to open in 2019, is also a sales spur. Season-ticket packages for the Rams reportedly ran from $360 a seat up to $2,025.

Remember that by early December, the honeymoon had worn off quite visibly:

So there’s legitimate concern that the supremacy in ticket revenue came on the strength of built-in demand that will wane with time, ESPECIALLY if the Rams can’t put up winning football.

With a new head coach in Sean McVay and a new stadiumplexasaurus coming in 2019, there’s reason to buy into early hope. Right now though, it’s just hope. Fans were willing to show up in huge numbers and at huge cost on hope alone in 2016. That faded. Should it fade again, the Rams might find themselves having squandered a homecoming that was cherished by so many.

With another NFL team in the market, there’s significantly more pressure than last season to make good on the hope. Here’s to seeing signs of as much happen sooner rather than later.