St. Louis Post Dispatch
The Rams made history last Christmas Eve. Not the kind that they wanted, however. For the first time since the team moved here in 1995, the Edward Jones Dome wasn’t sold out for a regular-season home game. As a result, the Rams’ 37-31 overtime win against the Washington Redskins wasn’t shown on local television, per NFL rules.
As of Wednesday, only two home games for this season were sellouts: Dec. 16 vs. Green Bay and Dec. 20 vs. Pittsburgh. In an effort to avoid more blackouts, the Rams again have made history. For the first time, they’ve made public the number of tickets remaining for each game.
“One of the things that we’ve heard for the last couple of years, since we’ve struggled with getting these last 3,000 to 4,000 tickets sold, is that ‘we didn’t know we could buy tickets,'” said Bob Wallace, the club’s executive vice president. “So now we’re letting people know that there are tickets available.”
There are on-field and off-field reasons to push for sellouts, Wallace explained. First, the noisier the building, the harder it is for opposing teams to make their calls. Second, Wallace said, “it’s important from a commercial aspect to be on television.”
Wallace said about 97 percent of season tickets were renewed. Most of the remaining single-game tickets are in the upper level, in the $35 and $44 price ranges.
