Reported thus far on the NWSL site: CHI 4093 - Pretty good! If this is a sign for the rest of the summer, Chicago will be very happy. Hey @MRAD12 how much push was there to sell tix for the TV game? ORL 4445 - Good considering recent numbers, but not great for an MLS-backed team on the weekend. Then again, it was NJ visiting. NC 5164 - Also pretty good! Like Chicago, continued numbers like this would be a comfortable improvement over last year. DC 3509 - Okay, I don't know what's up with DC. The past few games were weather-marred, but today was absolutely gorgeous. If DC can't do better than 4500 on a day like today, I don't know what improvement could be had.
Yesterday was the last day of school in DC. I wonder if that had an effect. Families leaving for vacation?
Missed reporting last weekend's games: HOU 3480 - definitely better than their last 3 games but still definitely not good. The the extra loss won't help attendance going forward, and it might be that the attendance was only "up" because it was POR visiting... SEA 4032 - definitely off of their last home game. Not sure what to make of it. DC 4005 - getting better! Would like to see a bit more though. (I was out of town this past weekend for a tournament with my rec club) CHI 3317 - not as good as their previous match, but still better than their long-term average. That win should help buoy the fans moving forward, though! We'll be returning to POR and UTA for the first time in nearly and more than a month, respectively, which should be good for big return numbers except that they're midweek matches. X'-D So we'll see exactly how big of a return it is... At the very least, we should see the highest midweek attendance numbers NWSL has ever posted for a multi-game midweek!
What the heck is going on in Orlando? I know it is a mid-week game, but really 3215??? Unacceptable? Need to fire their marketing director. Meanwhile, the mid week didn't seem to bother Portland or Utah. Portland draws their biggest crowd of the season 18,237 while Utah draws their 2nd biggest 8,504.
*blows dust off thread* Lots of games in the past two weeks! I'm gonna group by team: CHI - 2858 - Not bad historically, but once again lower than their previous home match. NC - 5295 - Looks like NC have found their summer groove, sitting just above 5k for the second match in a row. If they sustain this, they'll be good. NJ - 2846 - Almost knocking on 3k is very good for Sky Blue. They'll need to top 3k several times down the stretch if they want to best last year's average though. POR - 18273, 17930 - Portland being Portland, though they're still somewhat underrawing last year. ORL - 3215, 4017, 4621 - The summer bump seems to be revving up in Orlando, which is good, but they're still well below where they want to be. SEA - 4781, 3172 - I can't figure out Seattle fans. The team needs a bit more support either way, though. UTA - 8505, 8394 - These are the numbers that ORL wants, and notably what they got in their first season or two. Hopefully the Royals fans keep it up into year three and beyond.
From this past week: NC - 3409 - Looks like the curse of the midweek has struck! Much lower than their previous two games. HOU - 3308 - Same story as the last time HOU hosted (which was in the 3,400's). Stable, but not good. SEA - 3191 - No one likes a midweek game NJ - ??? - Worryingly not reported yet. I'm guessing it's really bad, which is a shame considering they almost hit 3k last week UTA - 8761 - Chugging along nicely! That third loss in a row isn't going to help much, though - I would hate to see a lack of a playoff berth mean than the sophomore slump in attendance hits hard. CHI - 3375 - Chicago's best attendance since early June. Hopefully they can get consistently above 3500 as they close out their home schedule! POR - 15327 - Noticeable drop off from their previous two games. Hopefully just a blip!
Attendances from this past week: Utah - 8,529 - Still chugging along nicely. I'm getting a little greedy, though - would love to see one weekend where there's some random bump to get a 10k number. Orlando - 5,074 - Fourth match in a row where attendance has increased over the previous match, so that's nice at least. Hopefully the trend continues. Sky Blue - 2,338 - A good number for them. Also worth noting that the "missing number" from last week is now reported as 2,376, and that their average for the season to date is 2,299. Not at the 2,600-level they had last year, but if they keep these numbers up, it'll still make 2018 have the highest "lowest team attendance" ever for NWSL. (Were it not for FCKC's absolute crash last year, Sky Blue's 2,600-level attendance would have been a much better benchmark to set as highest "lowest team attendance" ever...) Washington - 3,628 - Well, I doubt most of those fans actually saw the game, unfortunately. Weather in DC has just not been very cooperative this year at all.
Sunday numbers, sans commentary since it'd mostly be repetition: North Carolina: 5,379 Orlando: 4,577 Houston: 3,907 Seattle: 3,704
Missed reporting the past few weeks, but just wanted to point out that DC got nearly 8k at Audi Field last night! I was supposed to be one of them, bought my ticket a couple weeks ago, but I got my ankles completely destroyed at my club's monthly Friday Night Lights pickup games and have been confined to my couch for the most part since then. X'-D Anyway, I hope 8k is enough to say playing the occasional game at Audi is worth it, since I definitely want to watch the Spirit there again.
Still a few matches left to play, but here's a really good, thorough look at what all the different attendance numbers mean this year: https://equalizersoccer.com/2018/09/04/the-lowdown-nwsl-2018-average-attendance-analysis/ TL;DR - you can get almost any answer you want depending on which numbers you choose to excuse for various reasons. Yay statistics!
I believe so. Utah didn't break 20k in their opener, and Portland hasn't had a sellout this season yet.
Some interesting stats on attendance concerning Sky Blue and the NWSL. The big question is what will the league do with Sky Blue? Could we see the same happen to Sky Blue that happened with Boston? With 10 teams we saw the league's attendance at 610,558 in 2017 jump to 650,567 in 2018 with 9 teams. A 40,000 increase. We saw the league average in attendance go from 5088 to 6024. Now if you take Sky Blue out of the equation for this season, that average jumps up to 6460. Also, should the league decide to go with 8 teams for 2019, and take into account the 23% bump we saw in attendance due to the 2015 WC, there is the possibility that the attendance with only 8 teams could jump up to as much as 763,000. That could result in an average just barely under 8000. Of course, this is based on the assumption that there is at least a 23% bump in attendance.