I guess Utah's fans power is also underlined by the fact that, with Kerr's and Utsugi's goals in contention, it was Matheson's who won Goal of the Week for last week. I guess this says there are simply too many of them on Twitter to overcome.
Of the 3 goals you mention, Matheson's was the best, regardless of twitter demographics. However truth does succumb to twitter demographics any time Ashlynn Harris is nominated for anything.
Matheson's goal was very good, don't get me wrong, but I've got the feeling that the other two I mentioned could have been serious contenders, not only for their worth in themselfes (Utsugi's incredible surface-hugging rocket through a sea of legs landed just in the little corner between Eckerstrom's extended fingertips and the post; Kerr basically created a scoring opportunity out of nothing, with an absurd torsion of her body while falling, seizing the only perfect moment to anticipate the defender and to surprise the GK from an impossible angle), but also because of the "drama-factor" (Utsugi's one decided a game that's already been called the best of this season so far, and probably one of the best in NWSL period; Kerr's is her first goal of this season in NWSL and with Chicago, from a player who's the all-time scorer for NWSL, but who had raised some legitimate doubt about her current state of form in the previous game). Despite Matheson's goal's quality (you can freely add drama here also, since it was the first goal in Utah Royal's history), I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the other two had won (I frankly didn't see many chances for Ubogagu instead). Thus my comment about Utah fan-base being Utah fan-base. But I admit I could be wrong.
Matheson's goal wasn't the first Royals goal of the day, let alone in their history. What it did do though is clinch the Royals first win in their history in front of their home crowd... if that is what you meant.
Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry to have messed it up and not having been able to express it properly!
And the rest: Seattle - 3607 Chicago - 2372 NC - 5866 Healthy number for NC finally; if they can stay around there for the rest of the season, they'll beat last year's average. Chicago is still, double-header aside, under-drawing last year, as is Seattle. (Seattle in particular has their year-to-year attendances starting to look dangerously symmetric around 2016.) Portland technically is too, but of course there's no real reason to worry about Portland.
This week: Utah: 8323 DC: 3284 NJ: 1923 Seattle: 3597 Utah holding fairly steady with good numbers. NJ is a bit concerning, even if the number is holding steady for them. (Its only fair to point out that there was some bad weather this weekend though.)
A bit above 8k would certainly be nice of Utah to hold to, but it would certainly be great if a few wins can help that bump up to above 10k. I know they stated a 10k target, plus (some fun trivia) no team aside from Portland has ever drawn an attendance number between 10k and 13k. Not to mention how it would be really nice to have a second team settle in to five figures. That number for the Spirit is actually their lowest of the year so far, but considering the absolutely awful weather we've been having for a solid week, (literally rained nearly 24/7 for a solid week,) it makes sense for the Spirit to have had little to no walk-up yesterday. As I mentioned before, I'm worried about Seattle. They're very consistent on the season (all three matches within 30 people of their current average) but that average is low - shaping up to be their second-lowest ever. Hopefully it goes up as spring becomes summer!
Also, they can hardly do better than their current second place with two games in hand! And, apart from this last one vs Chicago, their games use to be a very good show. Maybe the fan-base has been severely damaged by the disappointing results in the previous two seasons?
Well, if you take "disappointing" to be a relative term, then maybe? The Reign haven't been bad at all - they were 5th place in '16 and '17 with winning records, and '16 being only 2pts from 4th place. And, as you said, they're a solid 2nd right now. But compared to the two runaway shield seasons, I guess that's disappointing? If so, though, that's a nearly impossible bar to meet - which would definitely doom the club if attendance depends on runaway shields to keep people coming.
All three attendances are in and... well, let's just say they're all midweek game attendances ORL - 3,104 DC - 2,433 HOU - 2,668
Interesting to note that Houston's attendance number is the exact one reported from their last game????
Years of mismanagement and lack of fan involvement. The massive roster turnover probably didn't help either, nor does the slow start or large number of midweek games.
Portland's attendance, after four games, is running 165 fans per game below its attendance after four games last year. That's about a 1% difference.
2,229 reported for Sky Blue tonight. After a few sub-2k attendances early this season, looks like they're comfortably back above the 2k mark. I wonder if they can build enough through the summer to beat last season's average....
Just to throw this in: CRS last home game (vs. Orlando) drew 5000+ which is great! There were a lot of Orlando fans there, which helped. Good for CRS and the NWSL for that decent crowd but I was not too happy that their fans got the big win, however!
Other attendances from the weekend: DC - 3,199 (very clearly tickets sold), which is a bit under-average but definitely not bad, considering there were likely near-zero walk-up sales. Hopefully the weather is kinder to the Spirit as the summer moves on, since this is the second game recently where rain has dampened attendance. HOU - 2,941. Not much to say about this aside from it's not good. SEA - 5,251 on the other hand is very good! (for an independent team) I believe now that Seattle's 2018-to-date average is very very close to their overall 2017 average. If they can stay here, they'll be pretty comfortable by year's end. (About that stadium situation though...) POR - 15,018. Shifting paradigms as we often need to do when discussing Portland: is this, the year after their second title, the season where the shine comes off in the rose city?? Through POR's first six home games last year, they only drew under 16k once - this year, they've done it three times already. Their highest attendance thus far is roughly 1,500 less than the highest of their first six last year. The team and fans have set an incredibly high bar for themselves, and each year so far have pushed the bar higher; it's starting to look like they're gonna fall short (by their measure) for the first time this year.
You could be right. For some reason, I had a feeling the Thorns' attendance might be down some this year. In fact, I'm glad it's only down a very small amount, on average. I'm not sure what the reason is. I'm wondering if the advanced schedule has had something to do with it. The Thorns have played 11 games through the end of May. Last year, by the end of May, they had played only 7 games. School is just finishing up this week. Plus, the Thorns have played a Wednesday home game. Last year, through the end of May, they'd played no Wednesday games. But, it don't know if those are factors. Things just seem sluggish.
Sky Blue above 2k again this weekend at 2,188. I don't think they're gonna beat last year's attendance at this rate, but staying above 2k will be good.