There is some controversy around the way the Seahawks are selling tickets to the AFC title game. They aren't letting fans from the state of their opponents, the 49ers, buy tickets. They are only being sold locally.
"...fans wanting to cheer on the Niners in the January 19th NFC Championship Game in Seattle will not be able to buy tickets through the Seahawks, as the team is restricting sales to only zip codes in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of Canada."
This ticket ban is aimed at keeping both distant ticket scalpers and opposing fans out of the ticket buying process. The tickets would sell out either way, so this is unlikely to impact the Seahawks organization financially - if anything the slight increase in home field advantage that this generates helps raise their longterm value. What the restriction really does is gives more consumer surplus to Seahawks fans. People who buy tickets are getting something worth much more than face value, as suggested by the inflated price of tickets on secondary markets, so keeping tickets local means more Seahawks fans will benefit.
One of the big selling points that sports teams arguing for stadium subsidies use is that it brings in tourists for local businesses. Seattle's stadium, CenturyLink Field, was publicly funded after a long debate. And this game will surely bring in fans from outside of Seattle, but there is no question that making the visiting team's fans buy tickets on the secondary market will mean fewer visitors. It will be interesting to see if this gets brought up the next time an owner threatens to leave a city without public funding (especially if the Seahawks need a new stadium at some point in the next few decades).
Unfortunately that probably won't be the case - there has been agreement among economists that subsidies are a waste of public money for some time, and yet subsidies persist almost every time a team threatens to leave a city without a team. Maybe proponents of public funding for stadiums should just come out and admit that the subsidy is for local sports fans and isn't about economic development.