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An impressive number for a women's team under a brand new league. According to Merritt Paulson's Twitter account the Portland Thorns FC will hit the 5,000 season ticket holder mark by the end of this week. That should certainly be encouraging to not only Merritt Paulson and the Timbers front office -- who were tasked with fielding a team at Jeld-Wen Field -- but also the newly founded NWSL league which has a lot riding on the success of its clubs.
Here's the exact tweet:
The Thorns will be right around (likely above) 5,000 season tickets at the end of this wk. Thats more STHs than most womens pro teams drew
— Merritt Paulson (@MerrittPaulson) February 26, 2013
I would bet it's also more season ticket holders than some MLS teams have as well, though that is rapidly changing as MLS grows in reputation.
There's not much to analyze here. The Portland Thorns FC will probably be the best attended team in the league. With 5,000 season ticket holders, it's a safe bet to make that 10,000+ attended games are easily on the horizon, even if they're not a regularity. While those numbers aren't quite as good as even the lower MLS teams, it's certainly an impressive number and far beyond what women's soccer is used to.
Who knows? In a few years, we might even see regular sell outs of the Jelly. It's certainly not impossible.
Do you have Thorns season tickets? How many people do you think they'll draw on average?