If there were ever any proof that Sounders FC have arrived, not just on the national stage, but on the world stage, it has come with the release of the latest world club attendance figures.
Saturday’s attendance of 33,108 was the Sounders best single match attendance for league play. The Sounders FC also set the MLS record for highest average attendance per game at 30,943.
But there’s more. And the more might be more important to the long term vision and future of this club than all the North American records put together.
Sounders Go Global
The August edition of World Soccer Magazine has listed the 50 best-supported clubs in the world. Based on 2008-09 average attendances, Sounders FC has snuck into the Top 50, becoming the first MLS club to do so.
The publication of the table is bound to re-open the barely closed debate about Sounders FC closing off the upper tier. Qwest Field has over 30,000 seats unused every home game. A large tarpaulin covers the upper tier, yet the club repeatedly uses the words ‘sell-out’ to describe attendances. The club’s marketing men love the phrase and it has become a regular feature of the PR, though it has become an object of derision from fans of other clubs, who point out that a sell-out is not a situation where you arbitrarily reduce your capacity to a number you can fill. It can be argued that the use of the term is doing Sounders FC as much harm as good.
But now opponents of the arbitrary seating capacity have another arrow in their quiver. Sounders appearance in this list will draw attention from all over the globe to their existence and commercial success. Their progress up that list could be assured by opening up further seats to satisfy the demand for match tickets that exists beyond the current season ticket holder base.
That means more stewards and more game day costs. It also may mean removing tarpaulins which double as valuable sellable real estate to advertisers. So the move is not without its downside.
It seems though that the Sounders genuine and well merited jubilation at making this list has to lead to a genuine debate about the limit and scope of their global ambition. And it’s not as simple as merely depriving the marketing men of their ‘sell-out’ catchphrase. It’s more a case of daring to set the club targets it can’t be guaranteed to meet, as opposed to safe ones that make for great PR.
Here are the top ten:
1. Manchester United 75,304
2. Real Madrid 74,895
3. Barcelona 73,913
4. BV Borussia Dortmund 73,802
5. Bayern Munich 69,622
6. Schalke 04 61,361
7. Arsenal 60,040
8. Glasgow Celtic 57,670
9. AC Milan 57,066
10. Inter Milan 55,185
50.      Seattle Sounders FC             30,943
We are the World - Sounders Fans Make World's Top 50
October 25, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Side benefit of reading Prost, you learn that “tarp” is an abbreviation. Who knew?
October 25, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I can’t state this clearly enough: I absolutely COULD NOT CARE LESS about the “derision from other fans” element. As though I’m supposed to give a $#!T what supporters of clubs who can’t consistently sell out 20,000-seat soccer-only stadia think!? I also don’t choose to spend my time worrying about the semantics of what constitutes a “sellout.” Marketing and PR people are paid good money to spin, and spin they will, regardless of what I think.
The issue here is that rafts of empty seats are BAD for game atmosphere. Unless you TRULY believe that the Sounders could more often than not fill the entire upper bowl, it is better to find the balance of demand and achieving “critical mass,” and it is VITAL that upper bowl tickets not come at the cost of keeping the lower bowl full. The solution may be to just open up the Hawks Nest and perhaps only certain “upper bowl” sections, keeping tarps up elsewhere.
And as nice as it to discuss the Sounders chances of perhaps establishing themselves as a “global brand” I also hasten to point out it is all for naught without overall League health. Lets see how things go when the MLS swells to 18 teams in 2011, and whether that is economically sustainable (I suspect 18 clubs is about 2 too many, but I hope I’m wrong!). Its important to remember that the Cosmos were a global brand in the 70′s, but the NASL model was doomed to fail, and the lessons learned from that have brought us the oft-maligned MLS business model.
October 25, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I think the addition of Vancouver and Portland to MLS will do nothing but help the health of the league. Portland is already well supported at the USL level and should grow considerably at the MLS level. Maybe some of the other clubs will get better support when they see the excitement of the northwest rivalries. Let’s hope so. I also agree that it’s better to keep the sellouts and keep demand for the tickets. The atmosphere will just be unbelievable if we can get 50000 a game. Can you imagine if we could get sellouts of Qwest and break into the top 10 of best supported clubs in the world??!!! Dare to dream!!
October 25, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Jake- there is no way Sounders will sell 64000 seats for every league match. that’s nuts. i don’t think the empty upper level “detracts” from the atmosphere. i’ve had an absolute blast at every match. i’m a season ticket holder and the first match it was a bit distracting but i don’t even think about it any more. however it seems weird to me that they haven’t opened the hawk’s nest. that adds like (i don’t know) 5000 more seats? That’s totally do-able. i think it would be way more distracting having to have a 1/3 full upper level with scattered fans. ever tune in to Serie A action? it’s pathetic looking. I don’t want that in seattle
October 25, 2009 at 3:33 pm
@kritter
…which is exactly my point and exactly why I don’t mind the tarps…
for the record, the Hawks Nest would add 2200 seats, and a few of us are [trying to] lead an effort for a “supporters section” up there.
October 25, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I’m a season ticket holder and I’m for keeping the upped deck closed as well. I support the Sounders with my hard-earned money. But more than that, I give ‘em my FULL 90. I’ve found the energy at the friendly matches this season (when they opened the upper decks) to be a lot lower than regular season games. As a matter-of-fact, the best atmosphere has been at Starfire–which has a much lower capacity!
I hate all this talk of global branding as if (even as good as the Sounders are) they’re on the same level with even a mid-table EPL team. I don’t think they are.
Frankly, I’m in favor of a slow and steady approach. The Sounders have had a great first year and I really believe the front office is committed to fielding a great team. But eventually the attention and focus will lessen.
As Jake pointed out, overall league health is paramount. I’d like to see perhaps 18-20 teams and a continued effort to find and promote home-grown talent whenever possible.
When almost every team in the league is fully supported, then we can talk about expansion. It’s not all about just the Sounders or sellouts. It’s about avoiding the mistakes of the NASL and joining the rest of the world with a league that’s financially healthy, stable and able to succeed in the long term.
October 25, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I don’t think the FO would find those arguments for opening up the upper deck very compelling. They’re interested in building support over the long run and an important component in that is not diluting the atmosphere. If they had evidence that they would continue to sell out all the available tickets with the upper deck open, then they will do it. A good example of that is the current playoff situation. They sold out the playoff tickets in 30 minutes, so they’re opening up the loge seats in the upper deck to add another 3,000 seats. Those will probably easily sell out.
For the FO, getting into the top 50 is a nice validation of what they’ve been able to achieve, but they’re not going to be making decisions on the basis of that ranking.
October 25, 2009 at 11:10 pm
I disagree with the notion that the blocked-off sections hurts the team somehow. I find it pretty funny that some other people in soccer, particularly in MLS, carp about the Sounders claiming that the games are “sold out” despite seats being blocked off.
It’s delicious when you figure that those other folks cannot find a way to fill their 20K seat stadiums. If the upper deck had been opened and the Sounders sold the same number of seats, it’s not a “sellout”… but the SSFC would still hold the attendance record and would still be selling 150% of the tickets of any other MLS team.
There’s a ton of psychology at play here. The psychology of the current fans feeling like they have more value in their tickets, because those tickets are a limited commodity. The psychology of looking around and seeing a packed stadium. The psychology of the limited supply making people MORE eager to buy tickets (and thus probably paying more than they would if there were 65K available for every game.) And yeah, the psychology of being able to say that every game was a sellout.
I don’t mind the club setting a target that they can meet, as opposed to setting targets that are going to be tough or impossible to meet. For one thing, going into the season, they could not have possibly known that they’d sell as many seats as they did. The only hint was the extreme demand for season tickets, but even that wasn’t a sure thing when they came up with the “tarp off the upper deck” plan.
I vote for selling the Hawk’s Nest and the loge seating all of next year, and then ramp it up from there. Keep in mind that sales are bound to drop after a losing season or three (just look at the Mariners).
October 26, 2009 at 8:39 am
My whole thing is that 25-30K of people are soccer fans. The ECS NES and people around it want to be there. They love the team. This is my first year watching the Sounders and I can honestly say I’m hooked. The friendlies sucked in my view, because you had a lot of people there just to be there, and didn’t know how to partake at a soccer event. I was stuck in the Hawk’s Nest, and having to sit the whole game, and watch people consistently get up and leave during play sucked. People leaving at the 85th minute sucked. 35K should be about what we aim for next year. I can’t imagine watching the game from the upper bowl, away from the rest of the fans there. There will be a time and place where we can expand into the entire stadium, but not before the rest of the MLS is on our level. Toronto is the only team capable of drawing 20K consistently. If the rest of the league can average 15-20K the salary cap will go up (or even away) and we could afford to be a world team. Right now that shouldn’t even be an option, being an MLS team.
October 26, 2009 at 9:42 am
I’d rather them open the upper bowl to bring in 45,000 people/game and have some empty seats up top than tarp the whole thing off to attain “sellouts”. The demand for Sounders FC is high in Seattle and they’re losing money and a chance to bring in more supporters by capping ticket sales.
October 26, 2009 at 9:44 am
@ Derek Young,
+1 for catching that, well played sir!!!
October 26, 2009 at 11:01 am
i could care less about modifying the capacity to claim “sellout”…. that is all just based on artificially limiting the supply. The bottom line is the attendance – regardless of how many seats are “open.”
Making the top 50 in the world is a big feat, especially when you consider that, for most of the teams in front of us, soccer is their main sport – and for us it is the second (or third) behind football (and possibly baseball).
Congrats to the Sounders, let’s hope they continue to help the MLS gain popularity
October 26, 2009 at 11:31 am
I don’t think that the FO is going to put too much stock into breaking the top 50 beyond “isn’t it nice?” My impression is the FO is concerned with growing the fanbase so it sustains itself over the long term. Opening too much of the stadium would dilute the atmosphere and would leave a portion of those extra people wondering what the fuss was about. They could very well have a bump in attendance for that year with a severe dropoff after that. I think they see it as much better to have a steadily growing number of seats available each year, so that the supply is always just a little under the demand.
Also, if they opened too much upper deck capacity, then it would steal from the lower bowl, because presumably those upper deck seats would be cheaper. If enough people fled the lower bowl, it would create exactly what the FO doesn’t want, which is a bunch of fans scattered here and there in a giant stadium.
October 28, 2009 at 1:46 pm
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October 29, 2009 at 3:29 am
They should keep the upper bowl tarp, and open up the hawk’s nest. Right now the team is doing well,but in the future it may not be the same. You must solidified your fan base before you expand. I don’t think that it is a good idea when you have one strong team, attendance wise, while you have the rest of the league struggling with average attendance below 17,000. Taylor and Stacey made good points that the health of the whole league is important. You cannot have only one good team and the rest of the league is not healthy. We must not forget the NASL. We should learn from the NASL experiece. Let’s not repeat it.
November 2, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Great ideas about exbanding the crowd capacity. My ideas are open up the “hawks nest” or call it the “Green Wave” for all Sounders games. A Sound is a body of water and what a opportunity to have a Supporters Group in the Section with painted Green and Blue faces.
Another Option: open up the middle sections in the upper tier on the half line of both sides if there is at enough people to get season tickets for at least one full side. The Rest of the tickets could be sold for single ticket games. Keep a list of Season ticket holders in the order of their senority, so if the next year both sides open up for season ticket holders, they can move to better seats on the other sides.
I don’t know how many seats these middle upper sections hold, but I am thinking at least 5,000.
So with the Sounders averaging almost 31,000 seats and adding 2,200 in the Hawks nest/Green Wave that would total at least 38,000 fans. That is if my guesstamation of at least 5,000 seats in the middle upper sections is accurate.
Getting 38,000 tickests sold for Sounders games could be an attainable goal for the PR gurus. It would also test the passion and resolve of the Soccer fans in Washington State.
December 18, 2009 at 1:01 am
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