Before a phone call from an irate Attorney General Cuomo, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Ticketmaster were attempting to deny New Yorkers entry into Sunday’s playoff showdown between the Giants and the Bucs in Tampa, Fla.

Apparently, Tampa Bay was nervous that some extra Giants fans could upset the balance of Sunday’s contest, for which Las Vegas oddsmakers have the Bucs favored to win by a slim margin of three points.

Ticketmaster, acting on a request from the Bucs, was restricting sales of tickets to Florida residents only. Yesterday, it reversed course, opening up the remaining tickets to interested buyers from any state, including New York and New Jersey. By that time, though, Ticketmaster had only about 500 tickets left for sale in the Raymond James Stadium, which has a capacity of nearly 66,000.

Ticketmaster is owned by the conglomerate IAC, which is based in Manhattan and headed by Barry Diller. A spokeswoman for IAC did not make Mr. Diller available for comment.

Mr. Cuomo, who in an interview described himself as a Giants fan, said there “are very strong legal arguments against” Ticketmaster’s practice of restricting sales. It raised legal questions about interfering with interstate commerce and discrimination, he said.

“This is virtually unprecedented,” he said. “And as a policy, could you imagine if every team said only residents of our state can come to our games?”

Ultimately, the decision to open sales to non-Floridians lay with the Buccaneers, not with Ticketmaster.

“Earlier today we received a request from Ticketmaster to open sales outside of Florida for the remaining 500 tickets,” the team’s spokesman, Jeffrey Kamis, said.

Mr. Kamis stopped short of saying the team would welcome loyal Giants fans heading south to watch the game. He said the team agreed to open sales because “we had numerous requests from Buccaneers fans from out of state” and because of the team’s “longstanding relationship with Ticketmaster.”

He said the team had decided to restrict sales to in-state residents only for this Sunday’s wild card game.

“We wanted to make sure our fans here had the best opportunity to purchase tickets for the game,” Mr. Kamis explained.

Ticketmaster disputed Mr. Cuomo’s assertion that the restriction may have been illegal.

“We see no legal issue with a team or venue choosing to make certain tickets available only to local residents for a particular event,” the company said in a statement. A spokeswoman for Ticketmaster, Bonnie Poindexter, declined to say whether the company routinely restricted ticket sales to customers from a certain geographic area.

Mr. Cuomo called Ticketmaster yesterday and, in his retelling of the conversation, “called a foul on this play.” He said he did not speak with Mr. Diller.

The attorney general said there was a lot interest from New Yorkers seeking to attend the game: “It’s the winter and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to go to Florida for a few days.”

He said his office was first alerted to the issue by reports on sports talk radio stations on Wednesday.

Tampa Bay finished first in the NFC South division with a record of 9-7 this year. The Giants placed second in the NFC East division, going 10-6.