All discussion related to attendance and stadiums. After over 1,000 tickets sold in pre-sale, Pride season tickets are now open to the general public! Get yours: https://t.co/UNEj63mvF0— Orlando Pride (@ORLPride) October 25, 2015
Rawlins told media earlier that he expects @ORLPride to average 10K in 2016 @NWSL season.— Mike Gramajo (@byMikeGramajo) October 25, 2015
More on Orlando Pride attendance http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-city-lions/os-uswnt-news-1026-20151025-story.html
1,000 season tickets sold in four days isn't terrible at all. Orlando has a well-proven PR machine. I think we could at least sell out the 100s section (about 23k) for the opener, and average in the 10k range.
2,000 Season Tickets have been sold. #JoinThePride 2016 Season Tickets: https://t.co/UNEj63mvF0 pic.twitter.com/pfjSZAvZuu— Orlando Pride (@ORLPride) November 5, 2015
I'll continue to the "NWSL" attendance thread with a recent statement by Phil Rawlins that the Pride are close to 5,000 season tickets sold.
So apparently, despite months of pre-sell, the attendance at the OGQ games in Houston have been pretty abysmal. I hope the Dash can do much better at selling than CONCACAF has done. I was hoping that the NT games would keep people interested in soccer during the offseason, but clearly not.
When Jen Cooper tweeted that the SF attendance broke into the top 5 for WOSO in Houston at 8800+ I thought, why was this market chosen for NWSL team (we know the answer) - there really does not seem to be evidence that there is a lot of support. Dash SM presence is excellent, they have a professional front office that benefits from Dynamo infrastructure, aforementioned Jen Cooper seems to be doing at least 40 hours a week in WOSO promotion (probably for the most part pro bono), so hard to say. Interested to see what the attendance is today for US-Canada - maybe this "rivalry" game pulls more interest, in spite of it being meaningless in terms of OGQ.
Ran across this article in Sports Illustrated. Alex Morgan article at the bottom of the page on Orlando Pride attendance. Should it hold true, the numbers should be huge for the opening game. http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2016/02/23/jermaine-jones-fifa-election-nigel-de-jong-alex-morgan
15k, damn.... Yeah, if that pans out, that'd be a huge accomplishment, and would basically assume the first and last games of the season would be NWSL records. Is 3x a typical multiplier from STHs to end-of-season average? I feel like that's about right for Washington and Houston, but would be wrong for Portland.
In the case of Orlando, it may be true, there is a whole lot of interest, but some who plan to go to single games, don't feel the urgency, for now, to get season tickets because there will be plenty of room in the citrus bowl, but it may be a different story when the new stadium opens up in 2017.
Sorry! I thought the multiplier might work in this case because of the high interest the team seems to be generating in the Orlando area.
Finally some good news out of Seattle attendance wise. Are they finally turning the corner when it comes to the supposed "soccer-city" support the Reign like they do the Sounders? http://www.sounderatheart.com/seatt...eattle-reign-have-tripled-season-ticket-sales
Orlando single game tickets went on sale today, and the lower bowl area of the Citrus Bowl, 31 sections, is close to being sold out. Not sure what the lower bowl area holds(someone said around 20.000 +) Looks like they are on their way to breaking the Portland single game attendance record in their first game. A certain number of those tickets were a part of a two game promotional packages, one ticket for a Orlando City game and the other for the Pride's opening game. I am guessing that their 5000 season tickets that was mentioned about a month ago, was a bit off the mark. The other indicator that season tickets mentioned are much higher, is that the designated 19 sections that was being made available for season ticket sales, show that they are pretty much sold out for their remaining 9 games as well. I am guessing season tickets sales could be as high as 9000, which means the 15000 season average made by Alex Morgan makes a lot of sense now.
Wow. Did they ever get this one right. Props to Orlando... my brain will not automatically dial into the Magic Kingdom now when I hear the city mentioned. I think I heard on The Dummy podcast that the average age of Orlando residents is in the early 30s and this is one of the reasons why soccer has such great appeal. Nice thought (although if you average me and a U-7 you might get early 30s, too).
Just a disclaimer, in the north end and corner sections they only have a portion of the rows open. Once they sale a certain percentage of that section they'll add more rows. The lower bowl seats 23,544 which I am fully confident will be sold for the opener. I'm guessing starting at the beginning of April they will turn up the promotions of the Pride.
If Orlando's attendance is as high as some are suggesting it will be, if the Thorns continue their attendance or increase it, if Seattle's season ticket sales are 3x what they were last year, and if Houston increases its attendance, it's going to raise some interesting issues. With Orlando and Portland attendance as high as projected, players are going to be wondering when attendance like that will result in significantly higher salary caps. The teams with lower attendance are going to be under tremendous pressure to do much better.
Considering that the profit-making teams share a large chunk of their profits, I think any pressure on low-drawing teams will be more on the PR side than on the salary side. Besides, we've already seen salaries start rising, I'm not sure if a league average attendance in the 6-8k range would necessarily imply a shocking salary increase above what we've already been seeing.
I don't disagree, but if Portland and Orlando can generate attendance in the 15,000 range, the arguments that Portland is unique will be gone. The question then will be (1) whether there's something wrong with the management and/or ownership of some of the other teams or (2) whether those teams are in the wrong markets. Thinkers will start looking to see what Portland and Orlando have in common and will be wondering if teams should relocate to cities that match their commonalities. The players will be wondering, "Are there other places teams could be located where all teams could have attendance at least withing striking distance of 15,000, and why should we settle for teams located elsewhere where the demographics won't generate that kind of attendance and revenue available for player salaries?"
Well that's easy. It's not what's wrong with other teams/other markets, (save maybe WNY and NJ,) but what's right with those two: extremely popular MLS teams backing them with the associated PR machines and established connections, plus basically no other "major league" sports to compete against. You're not gonna get that in most other cities. You'll get some of that as other MLS teams come on board, but there are some cities you're not going to get the MLS teams interested, and some markets you can't ignore (e.g. Chicago, DC) even if they have competition for the public's sports dollars. It won't be that Portland is unique anymore, but it and Orlando still represent a special confluence of conditions that's still very hard to replicate.