Quality over quantity, eh?
The Timbers announced today that they’d open up about 2,000 more seats at the House of Pane for two upcoming matches. Having sold out each of their 13 Major League Soccer home matches this season (at a capacity of 18,627), Portland will increase Jeld-Wen Field’s magic number to a cozy 20,323 for games against New England and Houston.
Tarps have covered entire sections of seating around the top sections of the stadium all season, out of concerns the narrow concourse around JW-F would morph into a slow-moving, frustrated crush of humanity. Those concerns, apparently, have been alleviated, at least on a temporary basis. Maybe they’re planning on piping a little Tetris over the PA? That always seems to get folks moving.
From the Timbers’ official site:
The team will open up seats in reserved sections 209-211 as well as approximately 1,200 seats in Timbers Army sections 201-208. The additional seats will raise the stadium’s capacity to 20,323 for the game against the New England Revolution on Sept. 16 and the regular-season home finale against the Houston Dynamo on Oct. 14.
“When considering our maximum capacity entering our first MLS season, we opted to cover certain sections out of concern that our concourse width affects the fan experience over a certain attendance threshold,” said Mike Golub, Timbers COO. “We are comfortable with the current operation of the venue and are undertaking a two-game test of attendance increase to see if we can permanently expand our capacity a bit and meet increased demand with negligible impact on the overall fan experience.”
Remaining tickets for the Timbers’ final home games of the season can be purchased at the JELD-WEN Field box office, area Ticketmaster outlets, online at www.ticketmaster.com or by phone at (800) 745-3000.
Get your tickets today! Then, maybe start working on holding it for 90 minutes.
It’s a long time in coming, and I’m glad the front office is finally going to experiment with expanding capacity. The concourse can be nuts at halftime, but people are beginning to figure out where the choke-points are (note to the uninitiated: restroom has a line? guaranteed the one 100 ft down the way is a ghost town) and how to avoid them.