Houston is generally a lower tier sports town which is definitely true in soccer (unless you are talking Liga MX or Mexican national team). The Dynamo struggle with mid-week games and, not surprisingly, so do the Dash. That said, the game drew 6,425 which was 3rd highest this season and 15-20% higher than mid-week games last season, just to put some perspective on that number.
It is amazing that Friday's game against Sky Blue doesn't seem to be generating much interest as one might expect, yet their next game against Seattle(2 weeks), which is on a Wednesday, is nearly sold out and will likely require opening up the upper level sections.
Bolded points are the only explanation you need. No one is interested in Sky Blue. Everyone wants to see Seattle. Pretty simple.
That's obvious, since everywhere Seattle goes, has been a sell-out since the WWC, yet I just thought that Lloyd, Brian, and Klingenberg would have had better drawing appeal for the team, regardless of who they were playing.
btw, do these ticket buyers around the league know that solo is not playing? are the tickets being sold under false pretense? does solo at least travel with the team and sign after the game?
Well, think of it this way: fans at the moment are still player-specific instead of team-specific. Lloyd is a star, Solo is a star, Rapinoe is a star, and Brian/Kling are stars but not on the same level, so count them together as "one star". Sky Blue has Rampone and O'Hara, but they're both also at best "one star" together. So the HOU/SEA theoretically has four stars to showcase while the HOU/NJ game has maybe three. Solo (and Rapinoe) did not travel to DC for Seattle's game there, so I'm guessing chances of appearing in Houston are quite low as well.
I think you have to put it in perspective, though: the Dash are the second highest in the league in attendance. You can't compare them to Portland simply because they are both MLS owned sides. The Portland Timbers fan base is much stronger than the Houston Dynamo. Timbers have a long waiting list for season tickets and you'll never see an empty seat for the Timbers in that stadium. Even when the Dynamo sell out, there are still a ton of empty seats as plenty of season ticket holders and even people who bought tickets for the game don't show up. Portland and soccer are special. Nobody else is going to recreate that, no matter who is on their team (not at this stage in the league's history). This is why the Dash capped capacity at 7000. Even with Lloyd, they will only rarely be able to sell above that. Friday night is trending towards another 6000 or so right now which is pretty good as Friday is another terrible night to have a game. Thank goodness their next Friday game is against Seattle, otherwise that would be a tough sell as well.
Last year the Dash marketed opposing team players because they had no names of their own. This year, the marketing is strictly their own players. The Dash aren't selling tickets on the basis of Solo and Rapinoe coming to town, therefore no obligation to tell people they might not. That's up to the fans to be plugged in on health of the players.
Since you seem to know a lot about the Dash and Dynamo, I had a question. What made them decide to select orange as their teams color. I know they use other colors, but orange seems to be the primary color. Even the seats are orange. I would think they would want to pick a cooler color like blue or green. Also, there are two very big universities in the state, who have a genuine dislike for each other, one happens to have orange as their school color, while the other is just down the road about a hour a half away with a whole lot of alumni living in the Houston area. Just seems odd to settle on orange as the color from a marketing standpoint.
As I understand it, the Dynamo are orange because the league wanted an orange team. Nobody else was orange and MLS wanted variation in color across the league. Dash are orange because sister team to the Dynamo. Never heard anybody mention UT-Austin colors. The two colors look nothing alike. UT-Austin is dark, almost brown.
The first time I saw the orange UT came to mind, and thought to myself what are they doing. I just get hot looking at those orange seats.
First person I've ever heard bring it up. You mean hot like hot and sweaty? Nope, never felt one of the seats be warm. Always cool and comfortable.
Has nothing to do with whether the seat is cool and comfortable. It has to do with word association. Which colors remind you of fire, hot , or flame. Orange or Red would first come to mind for me.
It looks like the Seattle game on Aug. 21 is officially a sell-out. Two sections in the upper deck are now available. As of now, it will be the 2nd highest attendance for the year for Houston.
Jonathan Tannenwald @thegoalkeeper 24m Houston Dash and Dynamo say they’ll start the season at 6,500 capacity, 30% of BBVA Stadium’s 22,039 seats.