I am a Galaxy fan, I see them at every game lol (even when sold out - I think people just wander around the stadium)
Attendance for MLS Cup Final, December 7 Los Angeles Galaxy (vs. New York Red Bulls) 26,812 2024 MLS Cup Playoff TOTAL ATTENDANCE: 697,394 AVERAGE: 24,048 (29 Matches)
Tickets distributed. Makes sense if STHs had to buy tickets for this game. It did look fuller than the Conference final looking at the berm.
I am talking about the old days when they'd announce the fire marshal limit for any kind of sellout. Seats sold, nobody on grass? 27k. Seats sold, grass so full people have to stand? 27k. They only announced more when they built temporary seating for a Real Madrid friendly and MLS Cup 2011 and 2012. 30,281 in 2011 and 30,510 ( I think this is still the stadium record) for 2012. They also used temporary seating earlier in 2012 against Real Madrid for an announced attendance of 30,317. But then the Chargers made that temporary seating permanent, and capacity became 25,510. Then they removed the temporary seating and capacity stayed in the 25k range. Who knows how it all works!
1869382181270986815 is not a valid tweet id What do you guys prefer - stay at small stadium but charge insane prices like the Galaxy? Or move to far off large stadium like Columbus (assuming they don't double up and make it insane prices at far off stadium)?
Messi playing isn't a valid test for anything. He gets a big crowd everywhere in the world and it doesn't prove anything.
It proves there is a crowd for soccer. Cleveland was once a expansion target and the owner of the Crew own the NFL Browns.
It serves the dual purpose of geographically expanding their fanbase. Some may come for Messi but end up following the Crew.
Is ther Is there a third option? It's a given they're going to double down and make the prices insane in that far off stadium.
That's what they'll certainly try to do. This is a one-off cash grab, nothing more. Or at least an attempt at one. To call it unpopular with the Crew fanbase would be something of an understatement. So they'll lose a big chunk of those fans, who simpy won't drive 2.5 hours north to watch a "home" game, and have to make up those fans, plus add tens of thousands of others in a city where MLS isn't exactly front page sports news. Oh, in mid-April, when the weather could be great or miserable. No other MLS club has tried something like this: relocating a regular season game to a completely different market, hours away from their core fanbase. So, sure, they could sell out the stadium, but that seems unlikely. In any event, it's a gamble, and one that's managed to piss off the team's actual fans (not including the smal percentage of season ticket holders who live in NE Ohio and make the long drive to/from Columbus numerous times every season).
In front of basically nobody, and not to cash grab, but because their "home" venues were unavailable. Basically nobody in Hartford had any idea what was going on. We also played a "home" match in LA. To the best of my knowledge, the Los Angeles chapter of the Third Rail is not very sizeable.
Also they didn't tell anyone in Hartford. It wasn't planned, it was just circumstantial. The side effect of playing in Cleveland is that obviously there are soccer fans there. But in most places MLS has struggled to establish a fan base outside their immediate locale. Why not try and get Clevelandonianites to root for one of the Ohio teams. On top of the obvious cash grab its a great marketing opportunity the Crew, which they'll probably mess up by over-pricing.
I think it's a terrible look to play a key match away from the City that rallied to save the franchise and get a nice new stadium built.
Perhaps this is the cost of having the franchise saved. Their billionaire angel needs to get some money made.
This kind of feels like if the Fire relocated their Messi game to Milwaukee to try to attract that market. I mean, Milwaukee is in a different state but it’s a shorter trip than Cleveland to Columbus, and I feel like it’s just as likely anyone will suddenly start cheering for the Fire after a game like that as it is that someone in Cleveland will start cheering for the Crew. My guess is most anyone that could be flipped in Cleveland already has been. Feels like a bit of a slap in the face to the Columbus fans if I’m being honest.
Yeah but one extra aspect to that would be if the fire owner owns the stadium in Milwaukee. This is their owner trying to get his stadium an extra date.
By losing that same date at another stadium he owns. I get it: 67K seats > 21K seats. Still, there wil be some extra cost in hosting the game in CLE, too. The stadium will need to get set up to host a soccer game during a time fo the year when it's normally dormant. And he'll lose a big percentage of those 21K fans who'd be there in Columbus. Those fans need to be replaced, which means a special marketing campaign needs to get set up in Cleveland for this particular event. In other words, it's nothing like, say, NE, or ATL or Charlotte just selling more tickets in a stadium they alerady play in. Now that's a pay-day. Maybe they just assume Lionel Messi = sold out stadium. Time will tell.
Not MLS, but the Bills played a "home" game in Toronto for several years running and moved their training camp an hour east down the Thruway and grew their fanbase during the drought years.
Maybe Crew fans could consider a thank you for saving their club, building a nice new stadium and poaching for them the best manager in the league. Treat it like a big away day. MLS fans don't get many of those. I remember Notts County fans travelling in their thousands to Paul Gascoigne's Spurs blah blah blah.
The Fire got $10m revenue from one Messi game at Soldier Field, whatever the costs are the margins with the bigger stadium far outrun those.