Also noteworthy: -- Sporting Kansas City played before its 100th straight sellout crowd at Children's Mercy Park, drawing 19,869 fans for its 2-0 win over FC Dallas.
Oooh, if we're mentioning streaks: Friday’s game marked the 120th consecutive sellout for the Timbers at Providence Park. That means only about 41 more years of consecutive sellouts for them to break the city record.
It's not difficult to see why. A few years ago some Newcastle fans were flying this banner at home and, especially, away matches. Get some good players in (Juninho, Dax McCarthy), hire a good coach, and start playing decent football. Then sign a game-changer (on the field!!) DP who makes the local media start talking, and people start to think the ownership gives a damn. Add in a run of wins and the disaffected fans who'd drifted away will start to come back. If the club is trying, the fans start buying!
I think there's little doubt that the NFL is one of, if not the most, successful sports leagues on the planet. Still, it's no slam dunk. When the Oilers left Houston years ago ('97), they were scheduled to play in Memphis two or three seasons while their stadium in Nashville was completed. The attendance was so bad (apparently embarrassingly bad) that they moved to Nashville after only one season and just played in Vandy's stadium (originally deemed too small) until theirs was finished. No way to know what the future holds for the Chargers, but you can't just stick the letters N, F, L on something, open the doors, and $$$. EDIT: Well, actually you probably can "just stick the letters N, F, L on something, open the doors, and $$$" but there won't necessarily be a lot of bodies sitting there looking at it.
And it came head to head with the Royals hosting the Indians at the K (34,204) and the Chiefs on the road in Cincinnati - all 3 games were simultaneously broadcast. While there's some overlap in the fan bases, Sporting has established their own fan base and doesn't worry about simultaneous home matches against the Royals (not sure if they've gone head to head against the Chiefs with home games).
Not sure about the Chiefs, but i know they have gone head to head with a Royals playoff game and if i remember right still pulled over 20k that night.
The rest of the story is even better than that, and it shows how idiotic, cheap, and hamhanded the organization was. They announced the departure of the team at the end of the 1995 season, and they played the 1996 season in Houston in front of a largely empty Astrodome. And then, after that experience of playing in front of "crowds" of indifferent fans who knew that they would be leaving in a year or two, they STILL decided to play in Memphis in 1997. Yet another reason why Houston was happy to get rid of Bud Adams, even if it meant losing the Oilers.
NYCFC has moved their Sep. 23 match from Yankee Stadium to Rentschler Field in Hartford due to a yankee conflict. All tickets are automatically being refunded or exchanged for another game at YS. They are going to be doing buses I heard, but it's roughly two hours by car from NYC, so it's going to be very interesting what type of crowd they see. They are essentially starting at zero, as even STH's need to manually purchase tickets to this match. It could be the first sub 10k game in a while, or they could make a great promotion out of it and still draw a decent crowd. We'll see.
Know a couple of guys near Hartford and they're excited. They don't have much in the way of actual sports to watch up that way other than AA baseball and AHL hockey professionally.
LA @ CLB: 12150 ATL @ DC: 11972 HOU @ DAL: 13339 PHI @ TOR: 28645 SJ @ RSL: 17460 SEA @ VAN: 22120 COL @ POR: 21144
Phew dodged a few midweek sub-10k bullets Matrix style there, I was most concerned about the DC number.
When I saw the crowd at the Dallas game in the highlights I was very worried. I think there may be a trashcan with several thousand tickets "distributed" in it somewhere.