ORLANDO – Orlando City have officially filled the bowl.
The club announced on Monday that their MLS debut on Sunday against fellow expansion side New York City FC (5pm ET, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, WatchESPN) at the 60,000-seat Citrus Bowl has sold out, with only a few hundred season tickets being held back for special sale this week.
The club have halted additional sales to Sunday’s game tied to Kickoff Week special events, and the club’s second home game – against Vancouver on March 21 – is already almost a lower-bowl sellout.
The Lions staged a massive #FillTheBowl social media campaign around their opening fixture but intended to cap subsequent games at the stadium’s lower-bowl capacity of 20,000, which will also be the capacity of their under-construction soccer-specific venue. Now, with the Vancouver date already close to that figure, the club are looking at other options.
“It is something we’re now having to look at as a matter of urgency,” club president Phil Rawlins said. “The interest and excitement in our first few games has been even greater than anticipated, so we’ll have to come up with a new plan to meet that demand. We knew Sunday’s game would always be a one-off, hence we’re not looking to sell 60,000 tickets every time, but how many we can have for the other games has yet to be defined. It is a good problem to have, though.”
The capacity crowd for Orlando’s first game will be second only to the LA Galaxy – who drew 69,255 for their Rose Bowl entrance in 1996 – in terms of league debuts, and Rawlins admitted the club have been positively surprised to hit the figure nearly a full week before the game.
“I always felt we would get there, but to get there a week early is amazing,” he said. “It is a tribute not only to our staff, but to the community and our fans as well. It’s great to feel the buzz around the city.”
That buzz was in evidence on Sunday when the team returned to a raucous ‘welcome home’ from fans at Orlando International Airport, despite a disappointing end to their preseason with a 3-0 defeat to the Houston Dynamo.
A group of drumming, chanting fans staged an impromptu celebration in the arrivals hall, raising big smiles with the players and coaches, and assistant coach Mark Watson insisted the reception had been a tonic after the Charleston display.
“It definitely gives us a boost,” he said. “We obviously didn’t finish in Charleston like we wanted, but it’s great to see the fans excited to that extent. It gives us another marker of what to expect on Sunday.”
Orlando still have six days of Kickoff Week events leading up to their MLS debut, including a ‘Soccer & The City’ fashion show, the Purple Pride 5K fun-run and an attempt at a world-record pub crawl to keep the city buzzing.
