March 30 – Denver Summit FC promised they were going to break the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) attendance records and going into their first home game in their inaugural season this weekend they did it.
63,004 fans packed Empower Field on Saturday for Summit’s match against Washington Spirit, shattering the previous record of 40,091 set by Bay FC at Oracle Park last year.
The league has existed since 2013. An expansion club in its first weeks of existence just rewrote its history.
“We set out a vision,” club owner Rob Cohen told CBS on the broadcast. “We wanted to have over 60,000 people here, and it looks like we accomplished that.”
Denver is a major sports city though no professional women’s team has ever called it home. Cohen understood the gap. “Denver is an incredible sports city,” he said. “I think the fact that we haven’t had a professional women’s team in this town — Denver Summit FC is filling a need.”
The club topped 15,000 season-ticket deposits before they’d played a single game. Saturday confirmed what those numbers have shown and that Denver is hungry for women’s football. The local men’s team in the MLS, the Colorado Rapids, can only dream about this kind of attendance as they barely fill Dick’s Sporting Goods Park at the best of times.
On the pitch, the Summit is doing the business as well. Last week, they beat reigning NWSL champion Gotham FC 2-0. They came into Saturday at 1-1-1.
They’ll play most of this season at a 12,000-seat modular stadium in Centennial while a permanent 14,500-seat home is built a few miles south of Empower Field, with a planned opening in 2028. Saturday was the ceiling of what’s possible. The permanent ground will be where the culture gets built.
“It’s all about expecting and demanding excellence day in and day out,” Cohen said.
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