June is here and the Heat’s season is over. The Panthers are done, too. Football is a few months away. Inter Miami should take advantage and pump its marketing arm into overdrive to get more fans at DRV PNK Stadium this summer.
After a dismal 0-4-1 start, the team is 5-2-2 during the past nine games (third best in the league over that stretch), playing entertaining soccer, and up from last place to seventh in the Eastern Conference standings, which would put Miami in the playoffs if they started today. They beat Portland, NY Red Bulls and Seattle, and tied Philadelphia on the road.
Despite the improvement on the field, 1 million Instagram followers and slick social media campaigns, Inter Miami attendance ranks last among the 28 MLS teams with an average crowd of 12,821 at its 18,000-seat home stadium in Fort Lauderdale.
Those 12,000 diehard Inter Miami fans — “La Familia” as they are known — are loud and proud. The supporters’ groups in the North stands never sit down. They sing. They dance. They set off pink smoke bombs. They wait out lengthy weather delays. But there are too many empty seats in the stands for what co-owners David Beckham and Jorge and Jose Mas have promised would be one of the league’s marquee clubs.
The average MLS attendance is 20,151 through 14 games. Atlanta sits on top with 46,861 per game, followed by Charlotte (37,701), Seattle (31,908), Nashville (28,612), and L.A. Galaxy (24,974). There is no reason a team in South Florida, a region known for its passion for international soccer and high TV ratings for World Cup and Champions League, should not be able to sell out an 18,000-seat venue.
Yes, this is a finicky sports market made up largely of transplants whose hearts and sports loyalties remain in their hometowns and native countries.
And yes, the team should draw better once it is in its permanent home at Miami Freedom Park in three years, at a true Major League Soccer stadium, with sky boxes and all the other bells and whistles the best MLS stadiums boast, smack dab in the middle of the city, accessible by public transportation, where commuters will see it from the highway.
But still, even at its less visible temporary home, Inter Miami should not rank last in attendance. Not with global icon Beckham as its co-owner and soccer savvy fans in every corner of South Florida.
To its credit, Inter Miami is doing slightly better than the Marlins, who, coincidentally, also rank 28th in Major League Baseball attendance with an average crowd of 12,155 at 36,742-seat loanDepot park. So, the soccer stadium is two-thirds full while the baseball stadium is just under one-third full.
But the bottom line is fewer than 13,000 fans are showing up, not much better than the 11,177 the Miami Fusion drew at rickety Lockhart Stadium (at the same site as DRV PNK Stadium) in 2001.
Coach Phil Neville addressed the attendance issue after Saturday’s 2-1 home win over the Portland Timbers.
“We’re the luckiest team to have such a loyal fan base, now my appeal to the other people around Fort Lauderdale and Miami is to get to DRV PNK Stadium because I think there’s something special happening at this moment in time, and I want to see this stadium full,” Neville said.
“We have the nucleus of a brilliant set of supporters, now they need to tell their brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles. We want to fill the stadium for the next home game against Minnesota [June 25]. We want the stadium to be rocking because this stadium is intimidating with the lights and songs and the way they never stop chanting.”
It didn’t help that the team was launched in March 2020, just as COVID shut down the sports world. Nor did it help that the first two seasons the team did not meet the owners’ and fans’ lofty expectations — in hindsight, probably too lofty.
Inter Miami finished in 10th place of 14 Eastern Conference teams in its debut season and lost in the play-in round of the COVID-expanded playoffs. Last season, they finished in 11th place, four spots below the playoff line.
But things are turning around in Year 3.
Sporting director Chris Henderson and an enhanced scouting department overhauled the roster, got rid of some overpriced players, and the lineup has been energized by a handful of talented, hungry newcomers such as 21-year-old Ecuadorean national team forward Leo Campana, who is among the MLS leaders with seven goals and two assists.
Other new players making a difference include U.S. national team right back DeAndre Yedlin, winger Ariel (son of MLS legend Roy) Lassiter, Brazilian midfielder Jean Mota, feisty midfielder Bryce Duke, Finnish midfielder Robert Taylor, Swedish defender Christopher McVey, rookie center back Ryan Sailor, and goalkeeper Drake Callender, who has been brilliant in place of injured Nick Marsman.
The league is on a three-week break for FIFA international matches. The next Inter Miami game is June 19 on the road at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where 67,523 fans showed up for the season opener.
If 67,523 can show up for MLS in Atlanta, anything less than sellouts should be unacceptable for Inter Miami. The team is climbing the standings. Time for the club to get out of the attendance cellar.
