The Los Angeles Rams have one of the smaller fan bases in the NFL.
That’s been the case for the franchise extending back into their years in St. Louis, and it continues to be the case in 2019.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Quantity and quality are two different things. It’s not in any way something deficient about a fan base to have a lower number of fans. If it were, nearly every NHL fan base would have to bow down to nearly every NFL fan base.
But the Rams are in a unique position. From 1990-98, the Rams’ best season was a 7-9 campaign in 1995 in the first year after relocating to St. Louis. The Greatest Show on Turf kicked off in 1999 and took the Rams to two Super Bowls including one championship amid a six-year period with five playoffs appearances. The next three eras brought about a run that coupled with the 2004 season created a 13-year run without a single winning season.
From 1990-2016, the Rams made the playoffs just five times, moved from LA to St. Louis and then moved back.
That’s not a resume that’s going to bring in a ton of new fans.
But the baseline has changed. The Rams remade their outlook in 2017 by hiring a new head coach in Sean McVay and making successful personnel decisions in key positions. As a result, they’ve won the NFC West the last two seasons and thus made the playoffs the last two seasons including a playoff run that took them to the Super Bowl earlier this calendar year.
Is it having an effect on building out the fanbase? Is the Ramily growing?
It’s hard not to think so. Rams QB Jared Goff is the face of Banana Republic’s new volcanoclothes. DL Aaron Donald continues to attract attention as perhaps the best individual player in the NFL. And despite the drama around his knee condition, RB Todd Gurley remains one of the best-known superstars in the NFL if not specifically for his fantasy outputs.
But the Rams are working from nearly the bottom.
I looked into social media accounts for teams as a pretty simple barometer as to how popular they were across different audiences. Your average Facebook user is different from your average Instagram user, but looking at those as well as Twitter at least gives us a sense of a general fan base size:
2019 NFL team social media comparison
| Team | FB | FB rank | Twitter rank | IG | IG rank | Rank AVG | Rank AVG rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | FB | FB rank | Twitter rank | IG | IG rank | Rank AVG | Rank AVG rank | |
| New England Patriots | 7,088,879 | 2 | 4,455,981 | 1 | 3,856,340 | 1 | 1.33 | 1 |
| Dallas Cowboys | 8,596,228 | 1 | 3,799,782 | 2 | 3,004,275 | 2 | 1.67 | 2 |
| Pittsburgh Steelers | 6,404,364 | 3 | 3,424,524 | 4 | 2,180,441 | 4 | 3.67 | 3 |
| Seattle Seahawks | 3,948,973 | 9 | 2,357,676 | 7 | 2,251,213 | 3 | 6.33 | 4 |
| Green Bay Packers | 5,317,163 | 4 | 2,221,175 | 9 | 1,713,961 | 7 | 6.67 | 5 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | 3,253,698 | 12 | 3,426,018 | 3 | 1,797,854 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
| Denver Broncos | 4,269,042 | 5 | 2,639,732 | 6 | 1,190,950 | 12 | 7.67 | 7 |
| San Francisco 49ers | 4,066,519 | 6 | 2,061,885 | 10 | 1,590,021 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| New York Giants | 3,876,010 | 10 | 1,819,445 | 12 | 1,853,569 | 5 | 9 | 9t |
| Carolina Panthers | 2,336,269 | 13 | 3,014,625 | 5 | 1,559,426 | 9 | 9 | 9t |
| New Orleans Saints | 4,031,576 | 7 | 1,394,238 | 16 | 1,233,651 | 11 | 11.33 | 11 |
| Oakland Raiders | 3,380,045 | 11 | 1,607,792 | 14 | 1,427,865 | 10 | 11.67 | 12t |
| Chicago Bears | 4,014,819 | 8 | 1,758,696 | 13 | 1,018,381 | 14 | 11.67 | 12t |
| Houston Texans | 2,186,031 | 17 | 1,862,762 | 11 | 1,163,696 | 13 | 13.67 | 14 |
| Atlanta Falcons | 2,007,776 | 19 | 2,344,655 | 8 | 945,166 | 16 | 14.33 | 15 |
| Baltimore Ravens | 2,279,429 | 14 | 1,458,277 | 15 | 908,082 | 18 | 15.67 | 16 |
| Miami Dolphins | 2,266,723 | 15 | 992,612 | 24 | 915,407 | 17 | 18.67 | 17 |
| Minnesota Vikings | 2,167,732 | 18 | 1,285,209 | 18 | 838,594 | 21 | 19 | 18 |
| Kansas City Chiefs | 1,618,768 | 23 | 1,284,933 | 19 | 887,549 | 19 | 20.33 | 19 |
| Washington NFL Social Media Accounts | 1,926,034 | 20 | 1,250,065 | 20 | 688,408 | 22 | 20.67 | 20 |
| Cleveland Browns | 1,295,438 | 26 | 1,212,284 | 22 | 956,893 | 15 | 21 | 21 |
| Detroit Lions | 1,875,800 | 22 | 1,345,553 | 17 | 633,586 | 25 | 21.33 | 22 |
| Indianapolis Colts | 2,201,154 | 16 | 1,033,173 | 23 | 599,791 | 26 | 21.67 | 23 |
| New York Jets | 1,887,694 | 21 | 1,224,062 | 21 | 646,035 | 24 | 22 | 24 |
| Arizona Cardinals | 1,454,713 | 25 | 920,617 | 26 | 668,589 | 23 | 24.67 | 25 |
| Los Angeles Rams | 861,325 | 31 | 847,157 | 27 | 845,439 | 20 | 26 | 26 |
| Los Angeles Chargers | 1,551,963 | 24 | 842,414 | 28 | 599,577 | 27 | 26.33 | 27 |
| Buffalo Bills | 889,746 | 30 | 985,728 | 25 | 516,723 | 28 | 27.67 | 28 |
| Cincinnati Bengals | 1,155,847 | 27 | 829,888 | 29 | 419,448 | 31 | 29 | 29 |
| Tennessee Titans | 947,012 | 28 | 758,478 | 31 | 436,485 | 30 | 29.67 | 30 |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 938,351 | 29 | 770,471 | 30 | 405,374 | 32 | 30.33 | 31 |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | 631,945 | 32 | 662,283 | 32 | 459,639 | 29 | 31 | 32 |
Part of this is the strength of Facebook as a social media platform compared to Twitter or Instagram as lesser platforms, but the numbers are stark even as entirely unscientific as this is.
The Dallas Cowboys have more than 8.5m Facebook likes. The Rams have less than 870k.
And just to point this out again, that’s not a condemnation of the Rams’ fan base. Quantity is not quality. The Denver Broncos had periods before and after the Peyton Manning years that, should the current one continue to extend their losing records, could well see the tectonic plates of NFL fans shift.
And that’s really what brings us to the current era of the Rams.
How do fan bases grow? Winning matters more than anything, but it also requires sustained winning and playoff appearances. Winning nine, ten, or eleven games is what grows a fan base internationally. Not Super Bowls. Not superstars. And the Rams are seemingly in a window where they can stack up at least a few more winning seasons even if the next few years go south. Otherwise, we could be looking at the best Rams era since the 1973-1989 run that built up so much of the generation of Rams fans that power the older end of the fan base.
And I wonder what that means as we head into a new stadium in 2020.
The Rams are on the upswing. The fan base is entering into an era of growth as we bid farewell to the Coliseum this year. That’s coming as the Los Angeles Lakers, the most successful team in the history of the NBA (suck it, Boston Celtics), are in the lowest point of their franchise timeline. The USC Trojans are similarly in a nadir with their worst season win-wise since 2000. The Los Angeles Dodgers, on the other hand, look like world-beaters, so it’s not as if the Rams get to take over LA-area media. But if the 2016 landscape put up a wall for the Rams to break through, (a) the Rams didn’t break through it with their 4-12 season, but (b) that wall came down thanks to some other teams in the LA zeitgeist failing on their own merits.
So into the 2019 season we go.
The Rams are coming off of a Super Bowl or bust season that successfully saw them reach that pinnacle. Already, there are similar aspirations being floated for this year. But those aspirations attract attention. And interest. And, ultimately, attraction.
Los Angeles went without an NFL team for 21 years. Expecting Angelenos who had figured out how to apply their fandom to suddenly switch to become Rams fans just because the franchise relocated was silly. Beyond that, a resume of what the Rams brought to LA was among the NFL’s worst of the last decade. Things are much, much, much (, much, much, much) better now. That’s an attractive proposal in and of itself aside from being buttressed by a gleaming palace in Inglewood opening in a year’s time.
The Rams remain one of the smallest fan bases in the NFL. But could winning ways and sleeker homes change that?