Really Los Angeles?

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marindem01
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Really Los Angeles?

Post by marindem01 »

Even before the final whistle blew in the 49'ers Playoff Game, the Los Angeles Rams and Ticketmaster announced that ticket sales to Rams/49er Game would be restricted to......ticket purchases in the "Greater Los Angeles Region". Never mind the fact many people living in the Bay Area have friends and family living in L.A. and those friends and family buy playoff tickets for them.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/la-rams-ticke ... nship-game.

The attempt to block tickets going to 49er Fans failed of course, but none the less it was a very stupid move. The 49er's have a history of beating the Rams, and in the past the number of 9er's Fans in the stadium has prevented the Rams Offensive Line from hearing their quarterback calling a play.

The Rams have home field advantage. The San Francisco Quarterback is going to be playing with sprained thumb, which he received in an earlier game.

As for Gail and I, we will be going to CostCo during the game, way less shoppers.

But I mean for fuck sake L.A. how lame can you get.
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ZoWie
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by ZoWie »

I have to admit that's pretty lame. LA is a lame city, but this is lame even for Lotus Land.

I'm not the one to ask, though, because I have long thought that, (1) LA is a disaster in all aspects, and (2) no sane person would be caught dead in their palatial new stadium, which they now have to pay for. I mean, why support wretched excess. Somewhere on about page 4 of the list of shit that LA needs to spend money on is turning a failed horse racing track directly under the LAX final landing approach into a football Taj Mahal. Even U$C made do with the LA Coliseum, though of course it's practically on their campus anyway.

Better we should have worked on the failing electric power and water mains, fixed all the gaping holes in the streets, retrofitted the schools with air conditioning let alone Covid modifications, increased the retention of water from our occasional floods that are otherwise spaced out by years of exceptional drought, and in general done more to create an even marginally functioning city.

In fact, personally, I have never paid the princely sums needed to watch big time NFL teams, with their seat licenses, high ticket prices on top of that, and more fees than you had in college. Right now, when the Rams have struck gold with their team winning playoff games, it would be a bad time to start. I'll leave that to the suckers, I mean the big fans.

From what I know, the 49ers can beat the Rams without a SF fan in the house. What's the streak up to? 6 straight games, in my vague recollection. But have the odds caught up with the Rams? If it's worth my time to find out, and it probably is, well, that's why they invented television.

I can of course understand why SF fans would be upset. I would be livid, frankly. It certainly reinforces my ideas on how the NFL sees the fans that pay for their over-hyped, exploitative product. I'm nervous about pro ball as it is. I have a love hate thing going, due to the number of players who seem to abruptly leave the stadium in ambulances lately.
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Number6
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by Number6 »

I would say the reason the Rams are doing this is to solidify their fan base in LA. With the Chargers also in LA, the Rams have a competitor, which they rent their stadium to, in the LA market. While the Rams are the better team, market-wise, they can't let down guard down when it comes to fans. Sofi stadium cost between $5 and $5 billion dollars plus the cost the Rams had to pay for leaving St. Louis so they have to do something to recover those costs. Limiting attendance to those in the LA area solidifies their fan base and for the next few years will lock their fans into a revenue stream.

One thing noted in the link was in the final game of the season, 49er fans outnumbers Ram fans in Sofi stadium. This tells me the Rams haven't locked-in their fans to the point where their fans would outnumber their opponent fans. The Chargers probably limit ticket sales to only the LA area since the crowds at their games tended to root for the team they were playing against. That was the case for the last 10 years, or more, when they were in San Diego. When the Chargers were here, in San Diego, I didn't care whether the fans were visitors because that meant increase tourist spending.

Also, in the link of the OP, the policy of selling tickets only to locals was rescinded but by that time the tickets had sold out.
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marindem01
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by marindem01 »

I heard about this story on Tuesday of this week. Right after the Packer's loss to SF.

To me it sounded just plain spiteful. Granted, the Rams have a suck record against the 49er's. I talked someone at St. Anthony Foundation, they have season tickets to the 49er's home games. She was ballistic. I pointed her daughter lived in L.A., so she got her work around.

This was lame, but compared to E.M.T. who was a fan of S.F. Giants who got beat near to death at Dodger's homegame, this was down right disrespectful.

Piss on the Rams for doing this. It sounds like some five year kid stomping off with the ball because the other guys would not let him play.
Last edited by marindem01 on Sat Jan 29, 2022 5:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by ZoWie »

It's silly anyway, because there are so many transplanted people in LA that opposing teams always have a lot of fans at the games. This isn't Green Bay.

The post game fight where the guy almost was killed for wearing Giants stuff at a Dodger game led to a lot of bad publicity for the Dodgers. It's getting hazy as to what happened when, but I do remember attendance dropped off for a time and they added more security in the parking lot.

The Rams and the Chargers both have a history of moving around. The Rams left, then they came back with their tails between their legs. Even so, they are a very expensive team to follow, and in a saturated sports market. Yes, SoFi Stadium cost a pretty penny, and yes, the Chargers play there too, and we all know who will end up paying for it. And it's also right under where the planes all land. They had to change the design after simulations showed the first design would reflect the setting sun and blind incoming pilots. What could go wrong???????????
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gounion
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by gounion »

ZoWie wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 3:32 pm It's silly anyway, because there are so many transplanted people in LA that opposing teams always have a lot of fans at the games. This isn't Green Bay.

The post game fight where the guy almost was killed for wearing Giants stuff at a Dodger game led to a lot of bad publicity for the Dodgers. It's getting hazy as to what happened when, but I do remember attendance dropped off for a time and they added more security in the parking lot.

The Rams and the Chargers both have a history of moving around. The Rams left, then they came back with their tails between their legs. Even so, they are a very expensive team to follow, and in a saturated sports market. Yes, SoFi Stadium cost a pretty penny, and yes, the Chargers play there too, and we all know who will end up paying for it. And it's also right under where the planes all land. They had to change the design after simulations showed the first design would reflect the setting sun and blind incoming pilots. What could go wrong???????????
Well, as someone who goes to Green Bay games, it's one big party. A LOT of opposing fans go to the games, and there's a lot of good-natured ribbing, everyone is there to have a good time.

The last time I went was a Detroit game early in the season, and we had some Detroit fans in our area. At one point, the Packers had the game pretty much in control, but Detroit scored a touchdown, if memory serves. This guy was cheering his butt off. We said, Dude, you're losing! He smiled and said "Hey man, throw me a bone, I KNOW we suck!"

I bought him a beer.

But Los Angeles has historically had horrible fan support, no matter what the football team. The NFL WANTS a team there, because LA is one of the largest TV markets, but they've always had trouble keeping teams because they can't sell tickets.

So what happens? Now the NFL has TWO teams there.
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by ZoWie »

True that LA is not as big time a football market as many other big cities. That's why the Rams left in the first place, though they did worse in St. Louis and had to come crawling back.

It's hard to be loyal to a team that came out from Cleveland, then abandoned the city for Anaheim because it wouldn't build them a stadium the way it did to lure out the Dodgers, then abandoned even Anaheim for St. Louis, then abandoned St. Louis and crawled back to LA. The NFL really, really wanted a team in LA, and it got two when the Chargers moved too. I don't know what kind of a deal was made to build SoFi, but if you've seen the pictures it's a huge construction project with not only a stadium that looks more like an airport terminal (especially being just downwind from the airport), but also a whole complex of other stuff. And it's not in LA City, it's in Inglewood, which I suppose needed something after the horse track closed.

Additionally, LA fans have a lot to spend their money on, and the live sports dollar is spread very thin. The fans are notoriously fickle. Winning teams draw, otherwise it's not the way that a more limited market would be.
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gounion
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by gounion »

ZoWie wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 3:59 pm True that LA is not as big time a football market as many other big cities. That's why the Rams left in the first place, though they did worse in St. Louis and had to come crawling back.

It's hard to be loyal to a team that came out from Cleveland, then abandoned the city for Anaheim because it wouldn't build them a stadium the way it did to lure out the Dodgers, then abandoned even Anaheim for St. Louis, then abandoned St. Louis and crawled back to LA. The NFL really, really wanted a team in LA, and it got two when the Chargers moved too. I don't know what kind of a deal was made to build SoFi, but if you've seen the pictures it's a huge construction project with not only a stadium that looks more like an airport terminal (especially being just downwind from the airport), but also a whole complex of other stuff. And it's not in LA City, it's in Inglewood, which I suppose needed something after the horse track closed.

Additionally, LA fans have a lot to spend their money on, and the live sports dollar is spread very thin. The fans are notoriously fickle. Winning teams draw, otherwise it's not the way that a more limited market would be.
Yes, the thing now is to turn the stadiums into a huge entertainment complex - probably smart since you only have like eight games a year. I've seen pics, it's as wild as the new stadium in Las Vegas. I'm really wanting to go to a game in Las Vegas, but the tix are quite pricey. It may be a while.

Isn't LA crazy about the basketball team? I've always gotten the impression that it was a big deal.

And yes, people have so many things to do today. That's the thing about the NFL - it's really the LAST shared experience today. Everyone and their dog may have watched the last episode of MASH (mine enjoyed it a great deal), but we don't have those universal experiences anymore, the NFL is the closest thing to to it. The NFL is always the most watched programming on TV today. They've done a hell of a job of marketing it.
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by ZoWie »

LA city is shaped like a one-legged chicken. Where the chicken's body leaves off and to the left of the leg there's a former Mormon sundown town turned real city people town called Inglewood. It's always gotten much of its tax revenue from sports venues. They built the Forum, where the Lakers used to play, in the parking lot of Hollywood Park, a horse racing track that of course brought in megabucks in taxes and visitors. Then the track went bust and they needed something fast. Now there's SoFi. The Forum is still there and a sometime concert venue. There's a bunch of new stuff. I haven't been down there to see what.

The Lakers play downtown, on Chick Hearn Street, in a fancy arena with financing that I don't remember. It just switched its name sponsorship from Staples to a crypto mining startup and they're already calling it The Crypt. The Lakers have a very dedicated following, especially in the inner city. Nothing starts a citywide disturbance faster than a Lakers championship win. We won't have to worry about that this year, the way they're playing.

This city still mourns Kobe Bryant, and has observances on the hill where the chopper crashed, and all that. One artist made a huge metal statue and dragged it up there for the anniversary, then dragged it back down again and took it home. No, I don't know what he used for that. Hopefully a very large 4WD vehicle. That thing is steep.

Magic Johnson is another good guy and he heads the syndicate that owns the Dodgers and who knows what else. Dodger history gets, well, interesting. They didn't steal Chavez Ravine and drive out all the poor Latinxs who lived in wooden shacks there. Nope. The city of LA did that through eminent domain in the 1930s or 40s to build a housing project, but then the usual people screamed socialism and so they never actually developed it. There were a couple of families living in shacks there when the Dodger thing went down, and they were summarily escorted out at gunpoint, but it wasn't their land. It was the city's.

There's a somewhat better hidden little valley just to the northeast of the ballpark that's still the way Chavez Ravine was. It's a perfectly vibrant community of Spanish speakers from some part of Mexico or other. People live there and have kids who go to school and learn, and all the usual stuff.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
gounion
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by gounion »

ZoWie wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 6:23 pm LA city is shaped like a one-legged chicken. Where the chicken's body leaves off and to the left of the leg there's a former Mormon sundown town turned real city people town called Inglewood. It's always gotten much of its tax revenue from sports venues. They built the Forum, where the Lakers used to play, in the parking lot of Hollywood Park, a horse racing track that of course brought in megabucks in taxes and visitors. Then the track went bust and they needed something fast. Now there's SoFi. The Forum is still there and a sometime concert venue. There's a bunch of new stuff. I haven't been down there to see what.

The Lakers play downtown, on Chick Hearn Street, in a fancy arena with financing that I don't remember. It just switched its name sponsorship from Staples to a crypto mining startup and they're already calling it The Crypt. The Lakers have a very dedicated following, especially in the inner city. Nothing starts a citywide disturbance faster than a Lakers championship win. We won't have to worry about that this year, the way they're playing.

This city still mourns Kobe Bryant, and has observances on the hill where the chopper crashed, and all that. One artist made a huge metal statue and dragged it up there for the anniversary, then dragged it back down again and took it home. No, I don't know what he used for that. Hopefully a very large 4WD vehicle. That thing is steep.

Magic Johnson is another good guy and he heads the syndicate that owns the Dodgers and who knows what else. Dodger history gets, well, interesting. They didn't steal Chavez Ravine and drive out all the poor Latinxs who lived in wooden shacks there. Nope. The city of LA did that through eminent domain in the 1930s or 40s to build a housing project, but then the usual people screamed socialism and so they never actually developed it. There were a couple of families living in shacks there when the Dodger thing went down, and they were summarily escorted out at gunpoint, but it wasn't their land. It was the city's.

There's a somewhat better hidden little valley just to the northeast of the ballpark that's still the way Chavez Ravine was. It's a perfectly vibrant community of Spanish speakers from some part of Mexico or other. People live there and have kids who go to school and learn, and all the usual stuff.
You know you're history. For anyone else interested, I just TONIGHT came across this video about that very thing - the story of Dodger Stadium! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxJuuWUzQzI
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by Glennfs »

The NFL needs a presence in the LA tv market. However the actual sports fan base in LA is terrible. There are simply to many things in Southern California for people to do.
Watch what happens when the LA teams go through a rebuilding stage of 3 to 5 years of 3 to 8 win seasons. They won't be able to give away tickets
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

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Glennfs wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 6:37 am The NFL needs a presence in the LA tv market. However the actual sports fan base in LA is terrible. There are simply to many things in Southern California for people to do.
Watch what happens when the LA teams go through a rebuilding stage of 3 to 5 years of 3 to 8 win seasons. They won't be able to give away tickets
For once, you're right. The fan base in Southern California is terrible because we have so many things for people to do other than attend sporting events. There are very few places where you can visit the ocean, the desert, or the mountains all in the same day or within the span of a few hours. There are many amusement parks, theaters (movie and live theater) local events, and cultural events for us to choose from that sporting events are much lower on out to-do lists. It's winter and yesterday I was walking along the beach in calf-deep water, something that would be hard to do in most parts of the country at this time of the year. Given the fact we have mild winters means we can be outdoors doing other things rather than fighting crowds to get into a stadium or arena to watch a game. In short, sports isn't as important to us as in places like New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, etc..
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

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New York isn't the sports town that it was in the mythopoeic era of The Giants Win The Pennant The Giants Win The Pennant The Giants Win The Pennant. It's a big enough city that it can still support multiple teams, but attendance isn't always huge. The football was exiled to way out in New Jersey, and you bet your frozen butt that it can get very cold out there by the time the playoffs come around. If the wind's blowing, it's more like Green Bay.

Madison Square Garden hasn't been anywhere near Madison Square for generations. The current incarnation is an ugly metal cylinder right where a beautiful railroad station used to be. The station was torn down sometime in the darkest 20th century, pissing everybody off, and that's when the save Manhattan movement really got going. Jump cut to a few years back, when the declining US Postal Service didn't need their huge building next to the Garden. You know, that famous thing with the "Neither Rain Nor Snow, etc" on it. Therefore it's been converted into a proper train hall, and Penn Station on ground level anyway is back to being the transit cathedral that it never should have stopped being. Of course, you still descend into the very scary underground caverns to actually catch a train.

They also built a nice new arena in Brooklyn for basketball & hockey.

The Yankees still hold forth near their old park in the Bronx. The Mets did similar in Queens. Both built new parks near the old ones. I guess some folks still miss the old Yankee Stadium. I don't. The Bronx actually has some very nice parts, but that isn't one of them. The new park isn't far away, but it's bigger. Too bad the Yankees aren't much better than the Mets, and neither is anything to get excited about. The Mets are right by La Guardia Airport, not to mention the tennis complex and the old World's Fair with the Unisphere and the spacey thing they used in Men in Black, and their new park sure beats the old one. The attendance and general atmosphere depend on how the teams are doing, just like in LA.
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by Motor City »

I see a sea of red out there and so far SF says no to LA
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

Post by ZoWie »

Rams looked like shit in the first half, but prevailed.

I would say that 1/3 to 1/2 of the fans there were for SF. The red popped out more on TV so yes, it did look as if they'd parted the Red Sea. But I'd put it at half and half max. Given that the red was all the way around, I suspect some LA seat holders made the supreme sacrifice (hopefully for a profit).
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Re: Really Los Angeles?

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KNX Interviewer: The County of Los Angeles requires that all visitors to mass events remain masked at all times. At the Rams game, the governor and the [speaker of the assembly?] were not wearing masks in several camera shots. In fact you were not wearing one in another shot. It did not appear that much of anybody at the game wore one in the stands. Does the County still mandate masks at mass events?

County Poobah: Yes.

KNX: But you were not wearing one, nor was anyone else.

Poobah: I wore it in the elevator. We still require vaccination certificates and masks.

KNX: Does the county intend to drop this mandate now that no one, yourselves included, complies with it?

Poobah: We have not met to discuss the subject. For now, the mask mandate stands.

[continue for 10 minutes......]

BTW in the same interview, it came out that the AVERAGE super bowl ticket is going for $10k online. VIP section will run you closer to $60k. Nosebleed country? You might get lucky and score a bargain at $7k.

I don't want to hear any more about how expensive New York is.
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