I think they will sell out. If anything, they'll just give group tickets to charities so they can announce it was a sell-out. I think that there will be a lot of people turned away at the door.
If it rains, people won't show up because it's not a good day for soccer. If it doesn't rain, people won't show up becuase it's too nice out to spend it watching soccer. They need the advance sales. Another factor keeping attendance down: 4:00 is a bad time for families with kids playing in their own season opener.
I hate to say it but I think our team has a pretty good tradition of blowing a little hard on ticket sales. The truth is we never have a ticket crisis UNLESS the local Salvadorians show up. --If you think about it has there ever been a non-ES regular season game that even came close to selling out??? Maybe its been too long of an off season but I can't honestly remember.
The last really packed regular season game that wasn't a doubleheader that I can remember was the home opener in 1999 against San Jose. I think there were 35K people in attendance that night. I think that was the bellweather match for flying ketchup, fries, beer, etc. and urine on the floors of the toilets.
I just received my travel team's schedule and we have a game in Crofton MD at 2:30pm on the 3rd - looks like I'm going to miss the opener ... sob, sob.
And so the time-honored Pollyanna vs. Chicken Little debate moves into the realm of attendance prediction...at least now I don't have to read any more posts about how stupid the team would be not to open the upper deck for the ten thousand angry fans who couldn't get tickets. Take a deep breath, everyone... The game will probably sell out, and even if it doesn't sell out in advance, a sellout is a sellout. And if it doesn't sell out, well, you can still expect a crowd of over 20,000 - it will be a great atmosphere. And as for being able to get tickets in the front row of 119 being a bad thing, I beg to differ. 119 is in the $16 section, which traditionally has been the last part of the stadium to sell out in advance, because the people who are buying in advance are usually willing to shell out $6 extra bucks or more for non-endzone seats. And the first row of an endzone section has about the worst visibility of any seats in the stadium - the only reason to want to sit there is to sing with la norte and heckle the opposing keeper, and even then, you'd have a better view a few rows up.
I completely disagree with this statement on a number of levels: 1) The group of fans that are likely to be enticed by the "Freddie Factor" are going to be people who don't normally attend games. These people are unlikely to know the difference and would choose the front row (if they even had a chance - which leads to #2). 2) Ticketmaster sells what they deem to be the best seats. Ticketmaster deems the front row to be the best unless it is designated as restricted view. 3) This fact combined with the fact that Payne said they were only half way to selling out shows things are not going as well as those in the front office or some of the people on this board thought they would. 4) I just checked Ticketmaster - I can still get 10 tickets in a block in section 304 (or 10 in 119 if I choose the cheap tickets). If they are filling 10 tickets in a block behind the net in 119 that means they have probably sold next to none in the 200 and 300s behind the net. 10 in 304 means they have a lot of work to do. I am not "Chicken Little" because I am not going to be disappointed by less than a sell-out. I never thought that Freddie was going to have the impact that most people were projecting. What this does is serves a message to the front office that simply putting Freddie in a DC uniform is not the answer to putting asses in the seats. They need a winning product and a better marketing plan if they want consistent sell-outs.
The most important of those is a good marketing plan. Oh, and a bit of cash behind it DC people will still go see a team that sucks, otherwise no sporting events in this town would ever be attended.
Although fans who have never been to a DCU match before, or haven't been in awhile, might just go with whatever ticketmaster recommends, few of them will be clicking "best available" for the $16 section - especially people who may have been to a game or two in the past, but haven't been in awhile. The seats behind the goal, in addition to not having great sightlines, also have historically been less family-friendly than seats along the sidelines. I think it's premature to speculate about this match being a sellout or not before the game is played, especially when all we know is that as of a week or so ago, roughly half of the tickets had been sold. And although you're not one of the people who would be disappointed by a non-sellout, others on this thread have expressed dismay at the prospect, which some folks seem to now be treating as a near-certainty. It just seems like a silly thing to get worked up about ahead of time. And Payne didn't say they were "only" halfway sold out, he said they were about halfway sold out, which was further along with advance sales than they had been since 1996. In '96, attendance at the opener was 35K, in 97 it was 28K, in 98 it was 18K, in 99 it was 35K, in 00 it was 24K , in 01 it was 22K, and in 02 it was 15K. So basically we're actually on track for a sellout (24K), and as of a week or two ago, we were within 3K of the total attendance at last year's opener - which says to me that putting Freddy in a DC uniform HAS helped put bodies in the seats.
Indeed they did. In fact, they had two. Aunger scored our first, then Cerritos tied it. RDA scored the winner in the shootout.