A Philadelphia sports fan who went off on a misogynistic tirade against a female Green Bay Packers fan in a viral video won’t be allowed to ever attend another Eagles home game.
The ugly scene was captured on cellphone video during the Eagles’ NFC wild-card round victory Sunday night at Lincoln Financial Field in South Philly.
The “individual will not be permitted to attend any future events at Lincoln Financial Field,” a source familiar with the matter.
The widely shared video showed a man in an Eagles jacket bending over, cusping his hands over his mouth and verbally abusing the female fan in the row in front of him. That fan did not appear to respond to him.
She is Ally Keller, who attended the game with her fiancé, Alex Basara, according to NBC Philadelphia.
The couple told the station they were having a good time at the game, even enjoying friendly banter with rival fans, when an Eagles fan behind them started making comments.
“He started out with playful jabs at first or kind of just saying things to us right when we sat down,” Basara told NBC Philadelphia. “I chatted with him for a bit. But then he just kept saying some of the same things. Continued through the entire game. It got worse and worse as the game went on. We were surrounded by Eagles fans. We were getting all the attention.”
The man’s comments became nastier as the Eagles’ lead grew, the couple said. Keller said she lost her cool when the man asked Basara whether he was having a good time and he responded “not too great,” to which the Eagles fan replied by saying the couple had bad attitudes.
Keller told the man he was the one with the poor attitude, but then he began taking personal shots at her, she told NBC Philadelphia.
“And then he just said, ‘Actually, you’re not even good-looking enough to be talking to me,’” Keller said. “And then I said, you know, ‘What does that mean?’ And he said, ‘You know what that means.’ And so I said, ‘Have you looked in the mirror yourself?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I’m a man. I’m allowed to be ugly. You’re a woman.’”
Basara said recording the incident is what ended up de-escalating it.
Keller said she was hesitant to say too much to the home team’s fan because the atmosphere was hostile.
“If it did turn into an altercation or something physical, all they see is me messing with an Eagles fan, and then I become the target,” she said. “And then what happens with my fiancé at that time in that scenario? It’s a dangerous situation.”
The Eagles won the game 22-10, advancing to play the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday afternoon.
Online sleuths connected the offending fan to a New Jersey management consulting firm that denounced its employee’s behavior.
“As an organization that has always stood for inclusivity, the conduct displayed was completely unacceptable and stands in direct opposition to our company values,” BCT Partners said in a statement Monday. “We have already begun a full investigation as an internal personnel matter to determine what actions will be taken.”
Late Tuesday, the company said, the employee had been terminated.
“We condemn our former employee’s conduct in the strongest possible terms,” it said in a statement. “This individual’s conduct and language were vile, disgusting, unacceptable, and horrific and have no place in our workplace and society.”
Philadelphia fans, and Eagles supporters in particular, have long had a rough reputation they believe is overblown.
At one point in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, an arraignment court was established in the basement of the team’s former home at Veterans Stadium to deal with fans apprehended for drunkenness, fighting and more on Sundays in the fall.
Antonio Planas and Dan Mangan, CNBC contributed.