Looking at the stream, I'll say that crowd was around 8k -9k. It looked similar if not more than what the Dash had on opening day. If even 20% of that crowd follow them to Lisle, it be a win.
Would it be a sustainable model next season to schedule most, if not all, Red Stars home games as doubleheaders with the Fire? I suppose not -- charging people for two games isn't very attractive, and you can't exactly control who stays and who leaves for the second game. But how wonderful would it be for the Red Stars to stay at Toyota Park? That field in Lisle is bad, like playing on concrete by the look of how fast the ball rolls. Not to mention far out from the city.
Toyota Park rent is abominably high, it was a rather large part of the reason the Red Stars self-relegated after 2010. So no, not sustainable, aside from the issue you brought up about always selling two games at once.
As a butt in a seat... that does not seem too far off, but maybe a little high (I would guess 6-8K, but since I dont really know the seating capacity/tier layout at Toyota Park, hard to say)... there were also people such as myself who only came in for the Red Stars match
Could you, or someone, tell us how the tickets were priced for the match? I had assumed there was one ticket that covered both games, but from what I'm reading that sounds wrong. Were there actually separate tickets? Or ...?
Well as a CRS season ticket holder, this match was covered with my season ticket. we just entered thru a specific gate and were directed to take any vacant seat in 3 sections at the center line. People already at the Fire match could remain in their seats if located in the ends or on the player side of the stadium or else move to any vacant seats in the "open" range - which I think was sections 116-132. If CRS ticketholders wanted to attend the Fire match, also, they had to buy a separate ticket to it. I am not sure if these were discounted. The Fire ticketholders I think just got the Red Stars as a bonus for buying their ticket. If you bought just for the Red Stars, probably it was just like getting a single match ticket for one of their games.
Has CRS looked into Flames Field at UIC. It's pretty small, but there is space it could be expanded quite a bit similar to what FCKC is doing at UMKC.
The natural grass pitch there looks amazing. But the bleachers they have now are not as nice as UMKC's seating. They claim to have seating for 1,000, but I think the fans would have to be packed in pretty tight to get 1,000 in there:
Their first game last year was barely over 2,000. But this is the team I worry about most now for attendance. They are on pace to end up being the worst team in the league this year.
Alright, with all four weekend games in the books, here are tonight's attendance numbers! Total so far: 39,852 Average: 4,982 Median: 3,002 The standard deviation for the data is 4,760 - which means that CHI's double-header number is officially more than two SD's above the average, and none of the other games are more than 1SD away from the average (which isn't reasonable for a normal distribution, though that's a noticeably questionable assumption to begin with, but it mostly works). Discounting that game, the numbers become: Total: 24,109 Average: 3,444 Median: 2,983 Although it wouldn't be good practice, we could iterate the process - removing the double-header means the SD of the new data set is small enough that HOU's home opener is more than 2SDs above the new average, while all the other six are within 1SD, and as before, having no data points fall between 1 and 2 SDs means your data set is noticeably non-normal. So removing the Houston game as well makes the remaining six games look semi-normal, with only BOS's attendance number falling more than 1SD away from the average. Of course, all this extra outlier analysis is just fluff at the moment, as our data set is still relatively tiny.
I don't think this can be looked at fairly until after the week's game. The Breakers made a mistake in scheduling this game on Easter, and the night before the Boston marathon. You have too many things working against you. The Red Sox didn't draw as well as they normally do tonight either. I think next week should be dramatically better, if not then I would tend to agree that things are not panning out.
Wow that looks awesome. Right down in the city, beautiful grass pitch, lights for night games. As you say seating capacity is an issue. Granted the Red Stars only averaged 1,700 last year. But I'm sure they want to aim higher than that. Still, maybe something to think about down the road, if another 1,000+ seats could be added somehow.
After the World Cup in 2011 Magicjack packed in over 3000 for games at FAU. That looked to be a similar size to UIC's stadium. Some extra seating or even standing room tickets on a great grass field like that is probably better than playing at Lisle.
Ah, magicJack. What a silly experiment and a farce that was. I wonder what ol' Dan Borislow is doing these days? If he ever approaches NWSL about launching another team, I hope the higher-ups politely tell him to get lost.
Well, if they can fit 1,000 in the current seating, then they could easily add 6,000 more... (each blue box is the same size as the existing seating) So whatever the current seating really is, they could easily increase it 6 times over.
Just to add... Marathon Monday is on Patriots Day, a state holiday and the start of school vacation week. Plus it was cold last night. It was a great sunny day, but it was in the 40s all day.
That must be including season's ticket holders whether or not they were there. I got substantially discounted tickets on a special they were running to boost attendance. I was in the middle of a season ticket holder section where more than half of the seats were empty..
So, I took a look at FAU Soccer stadium. FAU's is a little bigger, it has an extra row. I looked at a picture of the stands and based on my visual inspection there are 318 seats. That would mean that 2682 were standing room only... Anyway, if we were to take FAU's number, remove one row, and double it for the bleacher capacity (which I think is overly generous), UIC could hold 558. So it would really be 3906 with the expanded seating I showed. But they could probably fit another 100 standing room only in to get up to 4,000 capacity. If the Google satellite view is correct, there are two lots west of the stadium, and a huge lot north of the stadium (highlighted in red in the image below)
Holden, I am liking your thinking on this.... When we were at Toyota Park this weekend, we saw Jackie Vanaman who is a league staffer. She asked my husband and I if we were "Fans or Parents".... So that is a reasonable question, but it would be better if the teams could shift that conversation and assume they are interacting with Fans. A move out of the ex-urbs could only help with this.