Wow. Seems optimistic. Unless you know something I don't. So based on team history, does it stand to reason that the opener will better attended than the rest of the home schedule just because it's the opener? Or can we anticipate better crowds once the summer weather gets here and, perhaps, it becomes more widely known that there is soccer to be seen at Seahawks Stadium?
Haven't you read the other posts? The Sounders GM told me on April 27 that he's expecting "about 4,000" for opening night. He has said elsewhere if they can average 6,000 it would be awesome. So...where does the miracle 12,000 number come from? They probably won't have enough booths open to cover that kind of walk-up. @ Portland...6,852 @ Seattle....5,307* *It would be the biggest opening crowd for the Sounders in years.
Last year's Timbers opener drew 8,775. The year before drew more than 12,000. There has been hardly any promotion this year and very little media attention, other than negative stories about the ownership, so I would expect around 6,000. I'll leave the Seattle predictions to the fans there.
It's based on an imperical logic. 1. a lot of newspaper coverage. 2. the promise of a sunny day. 3. new stadium, decent concessions. 4. carryover from last years team. 5. factoring in last years season ticket sales to walkup attendance vs this years sales to potential walkup sales. 6. much larger attendance for Whitecap game than anyone anticipated. 7. or I could be full of donkey droppings.
I wonder if that 4000 is based on last year's model. Methinks the walkup will be much more than last year. Until you get a few matches in the new stadium and learn what to expect, I don't think you can predict this at all. Could be 10K could be much less. That's what you get when you have a large stadium and people don't need to buy their tickets in advance. I truly don't know and won't hazard a guess. Although a lot more people seem to be aware of the match -- went into some stores this week and total strangers actually knew for once there was a match on Friday and against whom.
In another thread about the Sounders, I thought they mentioned that they had already pre-sold 4,000. So with good weather and all of the coverage this week, you would think that 9 - 10,000 is a realistic goal. Last year for the first game at the stadium, what was the walkup?
Portland has good weather right now. Blue skies and the predicted high is supposed to be high 60s. That could be good for walkups. The only downside is lack of promotion. I haven't seen a single promo in the newspaper or heard a single radio spot. ZERO promotion! Is word of mouth gonna get 6-8,000 people there tonight?
If we get 6k-8k tonight Greg I will be VERY surprised given the pathetic nature of the marketing efforts by the Timbers. I mean c'mon RADIO is cheap as hell, how hard is it to work that angle? That said if we get 6k-8k I think it makes a very very good case for Portland being Soccer City USA. If 8k people go out of their way to dig up info, find out when the game is etc etc I think it bodes well for the success of a franchise here that actually decided to advertise.
Yes, the Seattle broadcast said 5993. AllisonA was saying over on USLDiscussions that she thought it was more like 4K butts actually in seats.
No, I wasn't the one who said there were 4,000. Announced was 5,993, and considering the pub was packed (close to 1,000) people, the skyboxes had pretty good attendance, and the seats above the concourse (cheaper) seemed more full than the ones below the concourse, I'd say the announced attendance isn't too much of an exaggeration, at least it wasn't when everyone finally showed up (late in the 1st half). There was NO advertising for this game. Zilch, nada, nothing.. The story in the paper today was buried on page five, behind 3 pages of JailBlazers coverage.
The attendance last night in Portland was good- I honestly expected more like 4K due to lack of promotion. A walk up of 5K for a tonight's game? Your stuff must be better than mine, because whoever said that is crazy. If a team gets a walk up of 1,500 that is a HUGE number.
Is he playing in Seattle tonight? What A-League team walks up 5,000 people for a regular-season match?
Didn't look like 6,000 to me last night, but it is hard to tell with the beer garden and luxury boxes. I think they also count tickets that they sold to businesses as part of a three year package to Timbers and Beavers game and I am sure many of those tickets go unused. The real test is going to come for the next home game which is on a Wednesday in May while school is still in session. Could be one of the smaller crowds in three years and don't expect much of an effort from management to promote it.
The Whitecaps usually have walkups in the 3000 range. They won't tommorow as they have already sold over 4000 tickets and the new "reconfigured" capacity of Swangard is now 5900. On another note the Sounders should be fined by the league for those road jerseys. Who designed them, the colour blind division of NIKE kit designers?
It's kind of strange. A couple of years ago they stopped selling tickets to the three north side bleachers (the ones way back in the north endzone-far away from the pitch). However capacity was still listed at 7100. In fact the final regular season game of 2001 against Seattle had a packed stadium and the crowd announced at 7199. This year they announced that they still weren't selling tickets to the north end bleachers, but magically the new capacity of the stadium is 5900. I don't know why they need to create a demand, with season tickets sales up to a record number, I'd have thought that on a good day they would get crowds well over 6000. I suppose they just want to be able to announce that the games have "sold out", I suppose they are jealous of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team always being sold out.
From what I've seen, I largely agree. Black numbers and letters are unreadable. Why they weren't white, someone at Nike will have to answer for. Hopefully we won't have white letters and numbers on our white home kits!! One thing you have to remember: the Sounders are basically at the mercy of Nike for this year with the Nike Italia "cookie cutter" kits -- the request to change back to NASL colors apparently couldn't be fulfilled by Nike in terms of creating a custom kit. We should see much better next season when we can have our own kit design.
Surely the people putting the numbers on the jerseys could have stood back looked at the kits and said "hmm, this isn't right." The league should demand that the kits have new numbers on before the next road match, even if they have to use white hockey tape to do so!
2 questions. could you post a pic or a link to the sounders kit? Why dont the Timbers promote any? Seems like they could really get some more people.