On March 8, 2015, Orlando came to watch soccer.
It was the culmination of months of planning, years of hard work and faith in a market and lots and lots of marketing. The magnets. The pub crawls. The ticket giveaways.
Orlando City had attendance success at USL Pro — shattering the minor league record for attendance for a championship game in 2013 and leading the league in attendance while at the Citrus Bowl and selling out nearly every game played at Disney during the final 2014 season.
They expected things to carry over into the inaugural season. The 60,000-plus who showed for that opening game to get a taste of what Orlando City had to offer was a major outlier. They were not expecting to sell out the Citrus Bowl each and every game. They gave out a lot of free tickets to get everyone there.
But the investment has proven worth it.
Orlando City has ridden that expansion wave well. Orlando City president Phil Rawlins promised that there would be a large spike in attendance with the jump to MLS. It was a trend that was seen throughout the league with expansion teams. Attendance spikes of more than 100 percent were things that happened — Seattle, particularly seemed to jump up in a major way and playing in a football stadium helped a ton.
The Lions’ have benefited from that too.
In their final USL-Pro season at the Citrus Bowl, they averaged 8,053 fans per game — at Disney, the average attendance was 4,743.
However in their first MLS season, Orlando City is averaging 32,973 fans per game. Their lowest attendance was 23,372 for a game against Colorado. That is a 309.4 percent increase from that final season at the Citrus Bowl. Removing the opening game, Orlando City is averaging 30,511 fans per game — still a 278.9 percent increase.
It is easy to say Orlando City has more than delivered at home at the gate (Daniel McGann of The Mane Land did a good job looking into this). Really the fan experience has been where Orlando City has made its impact.
The Lions’ attendance strength helped persuade the team to redesign their stadium to fit more people. A 20,000-seat stadium was simply not going to do it as the team has blown past its attendance projections each game it seems. The caps the team put on tickets to simulate the new stadium simply were not working.
The fans really forced Flavio de Silva and Orlando City to reconsider their stadium plans and expand its capacity. That is plenty of notice.
So too has been the fan experience. Orlando City fans were recently ranked the “Most Fan Friendly and Engaged” by WalletHub.com.
It has been all part of the experience for Orlando City.
So while the team has struggled some in its expansion year, fans keep wanting to be a part of the first year and experience it for the first time.
The question becomes what happens the second year. The newness will wear off at some point. Fans will want to see a winning team. Expectations change.
The experience of going to a game is going to continue being a selling point for Orlando City. There is not anything like it in Orlando sports, that is for sure. That uniqueness will continue to be something Orlando City can continue to sell.
As Orlando City prepares for its second season and its new stadium, the question is whether the attendance momentum can continue. Then again, Rawlins and Orlando City have done little to suggest they cannot keep things going.
UFC returning to Orlando
The UFC will return to Orlando’s Amway Center on Dec. 19 for the final UFC show of 2015. UFC was at Amway Center in April 2013 and saw a monster reception for a card that included a heavyweight fight between Fabricio Werdum and Travis Browne.
The event back in 2013 aired nationally on FOX and had 14,410 in attendance. That was clearly enough to get Amway Center back on the rotation for a second card.
The card for this event has not been announced yet, but it appears this will be another broadcast television special rather than UFC’s typical pay-per-view show.
Conner Donovan out for year
Conner Donovan’s Orlando City debut ended almost at the same time it started.
Donovan is officially out for the remainder of the year after tearing his ACL, Paul Tenorio of the Orlando Sentinel reports. This is the second torn ACL for the Lions this season.
The struggles with ACL tears on turf fields continues to persist. It is a random injury, but it has to be frustrating to see this continue to happen. The turf is ultimately an issue that is not going away until after the team moves into its new stadium.
It’s bad,” Orlando City coach Adrian Heath said. “He’s going to be [out] a long time, the kid, so we obviously feel for him. It’s the second one we’ve had, with Kevin Molino this year, so it’s never nice. But he’ll be OK, he’s a strong boy, good character, he’ll work hard and no doubt with our medical people, we’ve got great faith in them, he’ll come back bigger and stronger than ever.”
This is the third knee injury that has occurred at the Citrus Bowl this season. Kevin Molino also tore his ACL and Harrison Heath dislocated his knee cap earlier this season too. It is not a good look. But injuries happen.
Orlando City is still piecing together its defense and this is certainly a major set back for the Lions. They will be relying on newcomers and players acquired in the July transfer window as they try to make the Playoffs.
