It never does. This has been the case since I started watching in 2001. Play a 32 match regular season then the league levels the playing field. MLS sells out for an extra playoff gate. If it was about soccer you play a one-off at the home of the higher seed. Its not, so we'll play it this way. The Union were an 11-9-14 playing for CHAMPIONS of the league. There's a lot wrong with this system. We played , alright... As everyone else mentioned, we didn't convert our chances. That happens in this format. Nothing wrong with the players, the D, our playing style or anything else really. We just didn't make it happen.... AGAIN.
OK, I'll defer to your estimates, but to me it never looked even 2/3 full. The only picture I took which shows a good chunk of the stands, was 5 mins before KO, where it looks 1/3-ish. Obviously lots more people arrived in the following 15-20 mins, but I don't think it doubled... As for the concourses, yes they were quite full at halftime... long lines for the mensroooms which is surely indicative of a large crowd. Yikes what would it be like for a truly full-up stadium??! But if you're saying that there were 3-5K people in the concourses at any time, I have no way of gauging that. It's much easier to look at empty seats and guestimate the %. And I'm not saying NYRB are the only ones who seem to count absent season-ticket-holders as attendees. I just wish all the clubs would be more honest about butts in seats, butts through turnstiles. In MLS, EPL, wherever. That data should be readily available given the scanner systems.