Montreal opened their new Saputo Stadium yesterday, drawing 0-0 with the Vancouver Whitecaps in front of 13,034. All teams in USLD1 have now played at least one game at home (and only 37 days into the season - gotta love this league!).
Here are your updated numbers:
| Team | Home Games | Total Att. | Avg. Att. |
| Montreal Impact | 1 | 13034 | 13034 |
| Portland Timbers | 4 | 33311 | 8328 |
| Rochester Rhinos | 1 | 7138 | 7138 |
| Vancouver Whitecaps | 3 | 15039 | 5013 |
| Seattle Sounders | 3 | 13972 | 4657 |
| Carolina RailHawks | 3 | 12628 | 4209 |
| Puerto Rico Islanders | 4 | 16335 | 4084 |
| Charleston Battery | 4 | 14733 | 3683 |
| Minnesota Thunder | 2 | 4960 | 2480 |
| Atlanta Silverbacks | 4 | 9442 | 2361 |
| Miami FC | 5 | 11546 | 2309 |
4.28.08
Hard to glean anything useful when most teams haven't played more than a game or two (and four teams - Seattle, Rochester, Montreal and Minnesota - haven't played yet at home), but here are my observations and thoughts:
Compared with last season: Miami has improved; Puerto Rico has disappointed; Vancouver, Carolina & Charleston are drawing good crowds as you would expect; and Portland has had significant improvements.
These early numbers are promising for Portland, because typically attendance is slow to start a season, and only pick up once the weather dries up (we've had a very erratic spring with plenty of cold and hail and snow(!)). I expect Puerto Rico will pick things up (their two home games thus far have both been against regional rival Miami, but yesterday's game was in a torrential downpour on a flooded pitch). The Whitecaps sell out (or nearly so) every home game, but their park only holds just over 5K; rumors I've heard say that the new stadium plan for downtown Vancouver has hit a snag, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed (Swangard is a fine place to take in a game, but a big soccer stadium in Gastown would be immense).
It will be interesting to see what attendance will look like in Montreal, where they're opening their brand new Saputo Stadium next month. L'Impact have been drawing very good crowds for a few years now (averaged 11K last year), and Saputo will hold 13.5K; but those numbers must be taken with the salt grain that many of their tickets are given away gratis. Plus, as we've seen with Montreal's local rival Rochester, a new stadium does not necessarily greater attendance make. Rochester's PAETEC Park opened in 2006, and in that time the team has taken a bad turn: attendance is down, fans are disgruntled, the team isn't winning...oh and they almost went belly-up earlier this year when their owners took a huge dump. Their season was saved, but they took the "Raging" out of their name and unveiled a new and lame logo, and I'm curious to see if they can regain their place as attendance kings of the USL (my personal prediction is that we'll see Montreal once again tops in the league, followed by Portland).
Seattle enters their last season in USL 1 with their home-opener vs Portland Timbers May 10 at Qwest Field (a mammoth NFL stadium in the city core); thereafter the Sounders will play their home games at the Starfire Sports Complex (a rec/youth field in the suburbs). Based on the traveling support we saw last weekend (Seattle's ECS brought what looked like 40-50 to PGE Park, easily the most we've seen from that lot), and the bandwagon effect of having an MLS team starting up next season, I think we'll see better numbers at Sounders games this year. Then again, Starfire only holds 2000 (it was was expanded to nearly 5K for the title game last year, but I don't know if they're planning to do that for all 14 home games this season). For a USL club it's a far better venue than Qwest, which even when they put in a respectable crowd of 8000 (drawn for their home opener last year, also against Portland) looks cavernous and embarrassingly empty.
Have I got anything wrong? Please leave a comment and sort me out.
5 comments:
Thanks for putting this together. Gives us an idea of where the support is.
I'll be curious to see whether you're right about flounders attendance going up. There's certainly been enough soccer in the news there recently to spur a little bit of a ticket push, you'd think.
Ooooh this is cool. Could you put % capacity in a column? It might be a little complicated for teams with multiple venues like Seattle and Impact, but I'm sure you could figure out a solution!
Again, nice job and thank you for your work on this. Any chance for a column of 'change from '07?'
The Montreal home opener is sold out and they sold 4500 season tickets.
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