Everything is coming up roses — purple ones — for Orlando City SC during the early stages of its inaugural season in Major League Soccer.
After packing a renovated Citrus Bowl Stadium with 62,500 fans for its first MLS match March 8, Orlando City adjusted its plan to keep capacity at about 20,000 for its remaining home games, which was an effort to match the size of its new facility opening next year.
For its game last Saturday and again for April 3, the club is opening some corner sections in the lower level to expand available seating to 23,000. Orlando City will make further adjustments based on demand, team officials said.
Last week, Orlando City was a few hundred season tickets away from capping a total of 14,000 sold for the 2015 season. It’s a manageable number for the transition to the new stadium next year, said Rob Parker, vice president of corporate partnerships.
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The sales room at Orlando City SC has been a busy place.
Photo by: DON MURET / STAFF
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“We have tried to lay out the Citrus Bowl like the new stadium, apples to apples, and create a map similar in size,” Parker said. “If we see a mad spike, we can open additional sections. We still want to keep an intimate feel.”
The big demand for tickets thus far has team President Phil Rawlins considering whether to build a bigger stadium, but no decisions have been made. The same goes for questions over the increased cost to add more seats and who would pay for it.
“It’s too early to speculate, but the information we gather over the early part of this season will certainly be helpful in our analysis for next year,” team spokesman Lenny Santiago said.
As it stands, 19,500 seats are planned for the Populous-designed stadium. The project, pending the approval of state incentives in late spring, will run about $115 million, with the team and the city of Orlando sharing in the investment. The city will own and operate the venue as it does with Amway Center and the Citrus Bowl.
The team was originally the United Soccer League’s Austin Aztex before Rawlins and his investment group bought it in 2010 and moved it to Orlando.
Orlando City’s research shows that its fan footprint extends to Jacksonville, 140 miles to the north, as well as Tampa and Melbourne. Both of those cities are within 80 miles of Orlando to the west and east, respectively.
“If you want to see professional soccer in Florida, this is where you go,” said Chris Gallagher, the team’s vice president of ticket sales.
> TEXT ALERT: The number of professional and college teams using text messages to sell tickets has grown significantly over the past two months, according to officials with ReplyBuy.
The Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx; the Winnipeg Jets and Washington Mystics; as well as Arizona State, Florida, Kentucky, Butler and Eastern Michigan in men’s college basketball all signed deals with the tech vendor to push text alerts to fans with last-minute ticket offers. The same is true for the NBA D-League’s Reno Bighorns and Rio Grande Valley Vipers and the American Hockey League’s Chicago Wolves and Portland Pirates.
The technology enables teams to send texts to fans registered for ReplyBuy’s Mobile Pass program, which includes their payment information. To confirm the purchase, a customer sends a text back with the number of tickets desired. The teams then charge the buyer’s credit card on file to complete the transaction.
The transactions take place in a matter of seconds, and tickets are delivered digitally to a fan’s mobile device or by email to print at home (SportsBusiness Journal, Jan. 19-25, 2015).
At Kentucky, officials are always looking to improve the ticket-buying experience, said Joe Sharpe, the school’s associate athletic director for ticket operations, and the text service makes the process much quicker and easier.
Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @breakground.
