NFL Teams to Fans: Don’t Sell Your Season Tickets

A growing number of NFL teams are cracking down on season-ticket holders who heavily resell their seats.

The Colts, Buccaneers, Seahawks, Packers, and Lions have all made it clear to fans they want to curb opposing fans infringing on their home-field advantage through the resale market.

Indianapolis alerted fans that if they resell the majority of their season tickets this year, their subscriptions will not be renewed. “The policy is designed to ensure that tickets are used by genuine fans who will be present at our games, and to prevent the exploitation of our ticketing system,” the team said in a letter to season-ticket holders last week.

Green Bay has already taken action, revoking in February memberships of multi-year offenders who sold all of their tickets and giving them instead to people on the waitlist.

The Lions also took away season tickets in February from fans who sold too many of them. “The Lions have a rule that as a season-ticket holder you can’t sell over a certain percentage of your tickets on the secondary market. Did I sell over that number? Yes—I broke the rule,” one impacted fan wrote on social media.

But the Packers and Lions made it to the playoffs last year; it’s harder to keep fans happy in markets where the product on the field has been faltering.

Tampa Bay is launching a “ticket buyback” program in June for fans to exchange tickets for up to two games they don’t want this year for an advanced credit on next season’s seats.

Seattle made a similar threat that renewals “may be impacted” if Seahawks fans, known as 12s, sell most of their games.

“They did a great job traveling, but just wishing us 12s didn’t sell as many tickets as they did to make sure we kept the home-field advantage,” former Seahawks player DK Metcalf said after Lumen Field felt more like Lambeau Field following a Seattle loss last year. The team went 3–6 at home last season, their worst home record since 2008, and 7–1 on the road.