ATLANTA (CelebrityAccess) When it came to Major League Soccer attendance figures, the biggest crowd this past Saturday wasn’t in Russia, which is hosting the World Cup – it was in Atlanta.
The city’s new $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium has been setting several attendance records, while the city itself has been noted lately for drawing massive crowds to various events. In this case, MLS team Atlanta United, which attracts a record MLS attendance of 50,000 fans per game, drew 71,932 people for a match against Orlando City, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Meanwhile, neither of the World Cup games that day in Russia drew more than 45,000, although those stadiums were filled to capacity to watch two of the biggest stars in the soccer universe, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, get ousted from the tournament as their teams, Portugal and Argentina lost to Uruguay and France, respectively.
Not only did Atlanta whoop it up on Saturday, the soccer team has the four highest single-game attendance marks in MLS history. It drew 72,035 for a game in March, 71,874 in October and 70,425 in September, according to the AJC. It also set a single-game playoff record of 67,221 against Columbus on Oct. 26, 2017.
“I say week in and week out it speaks volume about the fans, speaks volumes about the city to have this turnout week after week after week,” goalkeeper Brad Guzan told the paper. “You don’t take it for granted and you are lucky to be part of it.”
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