SEATTLE – Friday night at “Seattle Stadium” was unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. I’ve been in the stadium for most of the Seattle Sounders’ biggest games at their home ground; I went to the 2013 World Cup Qualifier between the USMNT and Panama with my brother and best friend, and even attended the 2014 NFC Championship game between the Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers. I’ve seen the stadium more full, and I’ve probably heard it louder, but the sheer emotion of the match was just something completely different.
Walking through Pioneer Square, grabbing a Seattle dog just outside the gates, and inside the stadium you could tell that with extremely limited exceptions everyone in attendance was there to support one team or another. There may have been folks who primarily were taking advantage of ticket prices that dropped to more affordable levels in order to see a World Cup match in person, but even then more often than not, they seemed to have grabbed a Mo Salah kit of some form or another out of the closet and headed down to cheer on one of the game’s greats. I will leave a description or dissection of the dynamics among the various contingents of Iran fans to those with better understandings of the situation, but needless to say Team Melli had strong support in numbers and voice.
From warm-ups through to the called-off Iran goal and the final whistle, the fans of both sides were living and dying with each kick of the ball. The goals induced eruptions from the crowd, with the would-be winner and subsequent VAR decision producing by far the loudest responses. The volume was remarkable, but even more so than that the stadium seemed to reflect and magnify the pure emotion and feeling among those in attendance back towards the pitch. It was incredible to witness, and it also somewhat inevitably led to thoughts of how the Sounders can learn from it.
Maybe a Sounders-centric perspective is the wrong lens through which to view that game, but that’s what my prescription is; take it up with my optometrist. Besides, it may be the World Cup, but the site is still called Sounder at Heart after all.
Putting aside the fact that for many of those in attendance, this was a once- or maybe twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the team they love in person for a meaningful match, there’s still plenty of what made the match and the environment so special. Some people enjoy soccer, but only really tap in for international tournaments like the World Cup, but much of what drives that is the connection to what the teams represent. For those living away from the countries they support, international soccer is an opportunity to feel connected to a place that you may think of as home in some sense. It’s a chance to see a part of yourself reflected on a larger stage. At their best, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, club teams can do the same.
When you go to a Sounders game, you find yourself surrounded by fellow fans who love the team, who see themselves in the side representing Seattle, the Puget Sound and all of the Evergreen State. A team filled with players born or built up in the same places as ourselves. A team that espouses the same beliefs and ideals that many of us hold dear. The club has made efforts throughout its history to foster that connection, but there’s more that still can be done to help those roots grow deeper throughout the region and in more corners and communities. Taking the Sounders into the community, and bringing the community into the Sounders more thoroughly will only serve to strengthen those emotional bonds between the fans and the players on the field.
A step towards accomplishing that is making a trip to the stadium feel more worthwhile. It’s hard enough to justify the cost of a ticket for plenty of would-be attendees to begin with, but once you’re inside the stadium, the environment feels much less like an event than it has in the past and than it has for the World Cup games in Seattle. The concessions options are more limited, the prices are higher, and there’s just less happening around the concourse and beyond. Lowering the price to walk through the gates would help, and there’s certainly a balance of all of the above that strikes an adequate balance to create an enticing value proposition to new and existing fans.
Another step to take in tandem with lower prices, better production value, and an even greater connection to the people the club represents is to build back up the attendance numbers. The stadium has a knack for feeling and sounding full at whatever capacity they set for a given game, but it’s undeniable that the more people you pack into Lumen Field the better the atmosphere gets. They’re not going to hit a point where the stadium is loaded with 65,000+ fans for every Sounders game any time in the foreseeable future, but it’s certainly possible to achieve that sort of attendance more than once every few years for one cup final or another.
Beyond that, while the front office have their reasons for settling for attendance figures in the low 30,000s, opening up the stadium and finding a way to climb back to and beyond the high-water mark of the 2010s when the team averaged 40,000 a game for eight seasons. Inviting more people in, giving them a place to stand or sit, and an environment that will make them to keep coming back at a price where they can afford to do just that might not directly lead to a replication of the atmosphere from Egypt vs Iran 20 times a season, but it would get us a lot closer.
For the time being, I’ll just be grateful for the experience surrounded by Egyptian fans seeing their heroes advance to the knockout rounds of a World Cup for the first time, and excited to see what the next game brings.
