Great game, wrong venue
by Chris on 8/10/22Lumen Field - SeattleRating: 2 out of 5I saw OL Reign a few weeks ago in Los Angeles at The Banc. The game was electric, fan turnout was fantastic (complete with chants and a full supporters section), there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, and all of the concession vendors were open.
Flash forward to seeing OL Reign at The Lumen. I’m visiting my mom in Seattle this week and wanted to take her and my wife to a soccer game. We’d missed Meagan Rapinoe at the prior game due a to red card, so we were all excited to see her play with the rest of the team.
First and foremost, the team is fantastic. I highly recommend you come out and watch them play, it’s just a wonderful fan base to be a part of.
My only issues are with the venue and event planning. Venue staff was excellent, no qualms with them.
Our first mistake, we all met at the light rail Stadium station. I haven’t been to Lumen before, so I assumed this was the station to come to. It would have been closer and nicer to get off at the International District and see the front gates of Lumen rather than coming in the back from the Stadium stop. It’s also a long walk, maybe a half mile or so from the Stadium station and not very clearly marked which route you should take to get to Lumen.
Second, only half the stadium was open, and only the 100-200 sections on the West side of the stadium. I’m guessing this is because the turnout was low, and they didn’t want to staff of have concessions open for the whole stadium. Fair enough - but I knew it would be hard to find shade seeing a game in the middle of the day, so I tried to figure out the best place to sit taking this into consideration. If you are wondering - anything above 200 “R” is shaded on the west side around 3pm. Also, since only the west half of the stadium was open, the sun only became inescapable by halftime. Pretty much anyone who bought tickets in 200 sections retreated to the top rows of shade mid game. It was a 90+ degree day, and the East side of the stadium was in full shade by that time, but no one could sit there because it was closed off. Honestly, this is an oversight of the venue, the heat was pretty awful and could have been solved by having fans sit on the East side of the stadium for a mid day game in the summer.
Third, this is the Seahawks football stadium, so there are a ton of seats (72,000) and it’s a balancing act of being close enough to see the players vs being far enough away to catch a view of all of the action. I’d say maybe only 1/8 of the stadium seats were filled and only on the East half, so it just feels like the venue doesn’t fit the fans. By comparison, The Banc in Los Angeles is 23,00 seats and it just perfect for soccer games. The fans here are great by the way, and the team really embraces the young girls who come out to watch them play. It’s really heartwarming! I hope they give you a better venue or seating here in Seattle in the future, because you really deserve it.