Attendance at MLS playoff matches so far: good, not great

Crowd counts at six MLS playoff contests so far have ranged from wholly disappointing to fairly impressive. Let’s take a look:

Chicago Fire’s Toyota Park: Major League Soccer’s 17^th playoff season opened with a bit of a dog, as a national TV audience saw empty seats aplenty from a crowd of 10,923. Everyone around the league cringed at that one.  It underscored two points: the league has not advanced to a place where mid-week matches can content with weekend contests in terms of ability to sell. And, speaking of sell, having just three days to push  tickets clearly put Chicago staff behind the marketing and sales 8 ball.

Los Angeles Galaxy’s Home Depot Center: Los Angeles’ home ground hosted two contest, beginning with last week’s elimination match against Vancouver, which drew a disappointing 14,703. There was some confusion about an important point here. Yes, mid-week matches at the HDC generally have a cap related to its agreement with Cal State Dominguez Hills. But the restrictive cap was lifted, so this was just a fairly weak link.

Sunday’s match helped redeem things; it was a sellout at 27,000.

Seattle Sounders’ CenturyLink Field: Leave it to Seattle to pull the league’s attendance wagon out of a ditch. Friday’s crowd (for MLS post-season Match No. 3) was exactly what we all expect from the league’s far-and-away crowd-count leader: a down-sized sellout of 34,941. Atta boy, ye rave green faithful. We knew we could count on you!

D.C. United’s RFK Stadium: Great to see a little bounce back in RFK Stadium, where attendance has suffered along with a team that missed the playoffs four years running. Saturday’s match drew a lively 17,556; it was very old school DCU that way. Let’s hope the high-energy and encouraging numbers seen on a chilly Saturday becomes the new new-normal around the club’s venerable old ground.

Houston Dynamo’s BBVA Compass Stadium: Not a completely full house at the very orange downtown grounds, but not bad, all things considered.  Competing against the NFL’s Houston Texans (having a great season and playing just across town) on a fall Sunday is challenging, especially given such a short sell window for the soccer club. The only big patch of seats left unfilled were high behind the north goal. The official total of 20,689 apparently counted tickets unused, but the vocal crowd made for a swell atmosphere.