I wonder, at what point will MLS be mature enough that fans want to see a Joseph more than a Rooney or a Zlatan...
The FO, getting it right for once, is not pushing this as "COME SEE ZLATAN!!!" It's more of the "end of an era...even if the era only lasted two years...before we move into Cloud City" type of marketing. The Galaxy just happen to be the opponent. EDIT: Upper deck seats are on sale for $12.50 until tomorrow.
The Kicks saw a huge leap in attendance between year one and year two, from 23,000 to 33,000, then 30,000 and beyond that a slow death.
Somewhere buried in the Minnesota expansion thread a few years back, someone (@triplet1 ?) shared a very detailed post on how Mike Lynn and the Vikings killed off the Kicks.
While tempting, we should keep to referring to them as the Galaxy. It is kind of one of the rules of this forum.
A phrase I've uttered to myself many times in the last 19 years... Occasionally about stuff I've written...
oh... about every week ATL has a home game! IN all seriousness stop assuming all fans are created equal. There will always be fans that show up for different reasons.
44213 in Seattle 17594 in Philadelphia 22120 in Vancouver 18831 in Montreal 19737 in Kansas City 15072 in Houston 17456 in San Jose 15107 in Dallas
Thank God that was all before facebook; I can see it now: Mom #1: "Here's Mikie on his first day of school. I'm so proud of him - not a tear." Mom #2: "Julie just said the alphabet all the way up to K; she is so smart." Mary: "Busy day around here in the House of Joseph: Here's Jesus healing another sick man. Later, after helping me with the wine for tonight's gathering, he went to the lake saying he was going to walk around looking for some fish. That boy just stays busy."
They sure didn't help. Both the Kicks and Vikings played at the old Met Stadium, which wasn't that big. In 1978, the Vikings drew 353,547 fans to the Met, averaging 44,193. The Kicks averaged 13,333 less per game than the Vikings, but they had nearly twice as many regular season games (15 vs. 8). As a result, the Kicks drew over 100,000 more people that season. I'm not sure how many times a pro soccer team has outdrawn the hometown NFL team, but in 1978 the Kicks could and did. Construction on the (then) new Metrodome started in December, 1979. Unlike the old Met, there was limited parking near the new stadium. Tailgating was hugely important to the Kicks and their culture, so the loss of that was worrisome from an attendance standpoint. Beyond that, Vikings GM Mike Lynn originally threatened to oppose the Metrodome in direct opposition to the teams' owners. To get him on board, they agreed to give him 10% of all suite revenue from the Metrodome forever. That applied not only to the Vikings' games, but all games -- Twins, Gophers and Kicks included. It was a crippling deal financially that hurt every team that played in the Metrodome for years. https://www.twincities.com/2012/06/...mike-lynn-made-the-metrodome-his-sugar-daddy/ Nearly a year after construction started on the Metrodome, the original Kicks owners, who were local, sold the team in November, 1980. The Kicks were supposed to move into the Metrodome in 1982, but the new owners folded the team before they ever got the chance. Their last game was at the old Met in August, 1981. Now, the NASL had huge problems at the time, so it's probably not fair to lay the demise of the Kicks only on the Vikings, but in their rush to move into the Metrodome, they used that opportunity to really hurt the Kicks. That's why, though the Vikings have new owners and have had for years, when they tried to use the US Bank stadium deal to tie up rights to an MLS team, for many of us it was "here we go again."
Atlanta had 2 full stadium regular season games in 2017, 5 in 2018. So let's say they increase it by three every year, 8 in 2019, 11 in 2020, 14 in 2021 and 17 in 2022. 2019....45,000 x 9 = 405,000; 71,000 x 8 = 568,000 for a total of 973,000 for a average of 57,235 2020....45,000 x 6 = 270,000; 71,000 x 11 = 781,000 for a total of 1,051,000 for a average of 61,824 2021....45,000 x 3 = 135,000; 71,000 x 14 = 994,000 for a total of 1,129,000 for a average of 66,412 2022....71,000+ x 17 = 1,207,000 That is if the Atlanta fans don't get bored.