6,802 attendance at the Thorns v Red Stars pre-season match at Providence Park. Weather was rainy, temperature 48 degrees. It's school Spring Break, which is a time for Portlanders to escape to better weather, this still being the rainy season, so lots of fans are out of town. And still my wife says, "6,802, that's not so good." From her beach chair here in Hawaii.
It's higher than every other NWSL team's average attendance in 2016 other than Orlando. And also higher than most of the team's highest attendance (only Orlando, Portland, FCKC at their game in Sporting Park, and Houston had ones higher).
After watching that Chicago Fire game where only 15k turned up for Bastian debut... I finally give on that market for NWSL. Red Stars paying to play at Toyota Park is going to run them into the ground. The RS don't market well if at all, and playing in the middle of nowhere is not helping . They need relocation like the Flash did, even MLS needs to move... The red stars like the flash was, are one of the best team in the league and they have been there long enough to get a hold on that market but with other major teams there , the never will
I think the Fire's problems are far more systemic than just the location of their stadium. Signing an international player on the tail end of his career is not going to change that. I do agree with you that the Red Stars moving to Toyota Park has not immediately helped the team out from an attendance standpoint (I never really expected it would). However, it certainly is a better facility from a player's perspective and it hasn't hurt their attendance. In fact, if you take out the doubleheaders they played in 2014 & 2015, their attendance has increased every year since the NWSL started. Their 2016 average is a 75.4% increase (+1292 in raw numbers) over 2013. The only team that has seen a larger percentage increase is Seattle (99.4%). And only Portland (+3625) and Seattle (+2293) have a larger increase in raw numbers.
I don't know what attendance to expect for tomorrow's games, but I did see that the Thorns have advised that there are five sections, previously general admission, that now are reserved seats. I assume that means there has been an increase in season ticket sales sufficient to take those sections out of general admission.
This weekend (outside of Portland) might not be pretty given it is Easter weekend. In Houston, there has been very little marketing. Increasingly it kind of feels like the organization has given up on the team. Front office staff has been downgraded significantly, they are nickle and diming on things and there is virtually no marketing push at all.
Don't know. Most likely guess would be owners disinterested. Last couple of years you had a fairly senior person as GM (Ching) and a senior marketing person heavily involved (Amber Cox). Cox left (or was fired, depending on what you believe) and Ching was removed. Now, you have Waldrum as GM, who really isn't into the business side. No VP of marketing anymore at all, so you have a mid-level Dynamo marketing person getting involved in Dash marketing. Long story short, no senior people involved in Dash anymore. Tiny marketing budgets, declining season ticket holder base, so far less in the way of video production compared to last season, definitely less in the way of marketing and so on.
Tonight's match attendance is 3,521. Thank you Reign FC fans! #LetItReign #SEAvNJ— Seattle Reign FC (@reignfc) April 16, 2017
4,484 according to their own release: https://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2017/04/15/recap-houston-dash-2-chicago-red-stars-0
I blame the league for starting the season on Easter weekend. Kids are on Spring break and people have other plans in place for this weekend. Should have held off another week.
I think the holiday weekend definitely hurt, but it's Easter that moves around way more than NWSL opening weekend has. I like the idea that NWSL has essentially picked a weekend in April and has stuck with it the past several years. Until the season expands into upper-20s for total number of games, I think this works. Aside: damn, I hadn't heard Ching was gone in Houston! That's really sad. =-(
And, yet, at the college baseball game I was shooting, they set a new high for the season (about 20 home games so far)
The Thorns attendance was a home opener record for them. But then, Oregon is the most "unchurched" state in the Union.
True, but at the same time you usually expect your home opener to be one of the best-attended games of the year, so having a home opener below last year's average can in some ways be read as a disappointment. Granted, since it is Portland's best home opener to date, they don't strongly follow the pattern of having the home opener be one of the best of the year, but without that situational knowledge people might think less.
2016 Home Openers: 7,496 average (overall league 5,558) 2015: 4,776 (5,053) 2014: 6,073 (4,121) 2013: 5,127 (4,270) Last year Houston, Kansas City and Orlando had their season highs in their home openers. (Orlando's was its inaugural, obviously.)