The Seattle Sounders are advancing in the Concacaf Champions Cup after last night’s game… at ONE Spokane Stadium. How in the world did the match wind up east of the Cascades?
The short answer: Lumen Field is growing grass. The Seattle stadium, which is typically turf, will host FIFA World Cup games this summer—and all World Cup games have to be played on grass.
While their home turf transitions, the Seattle Sounders and Reign are left without a pitch.
So the clubs are playing some spring matches in Spokane, including last night’s Sounders match in the Concacaf Championships Cup—a major international tournament between North and Central American soccer teams.
But why host games in a small high school stadium instead of going to professional venues in, say, Portland or San Diego?
“We are Washington's teams,” said Sounders chief of soccer operations Craig Waibel. “We're no one else's teams. That's why we're here–because we're not willing to leave this state if we don't have to. We want our people to know how much we care about them.”
ONE Spokane Stadium can seat about 5,000 people—that’s roughly 13 times smaller than Lumen’s 68,000+ person capacity. Typically, about 30,000 fans come to Sounders games on the west side, and about 12,000 come see the Reign. So the clubs do take a financial hit by playing to such a small crowd in Spokane.
But to Seattle Reign general manager Lesle Gallimore, there’s a special benefit to crossing the Cascades.
“We have a young team—when you talk about development, we're developing some of the nation's top players right now,” she said. “So I think even for club players and college players over in the Eastern Washington area to see some of the players on our team and to have that belief or inspiration that they can do it—we had a trialist from the University of Montana that was a UW transfer in for two months. She didn't end up getting a contract, but she's a player that can see it now. And so I bet her teammates [will] come over from Missoula to see like, ‘Okay, what's she been doing?’”
Gallimore says that local exposure is good for the entire Reign club.
“The way the Sounders have molded a pipeline that's primarily homegrown, though not entirely, is phenomenal,” she said. “We're not that much different. We want to make sure that what we're creating as a football club is something that is ours. We're adamant about that.”
The Reign will play three upcoming games at ONE Spokane Stadium on March 25, March 28 and April 4.
Lights, Camera: Hospitality!
To host a game for Major League Soccer or the National Women’s Soccer League, a stadium’s gotta check a whole lot of boxes.
“Finding space, finding the right size, having it both be CBA and league compliant, it's tough going,” said Gallimore. “So kudos to Spokane for being a stadium we could play at.”
Hosting games at a Spokane Public Schools facility wouldn’t have been possible without the upgrades Spokane’s professional soccer clubs have invested in, said Paul Christiansen with the Public Facilities District.
USL Spokane has already added the video screen, lighting, and audio system that are key for professional games. Also thanks to the Velocity and Zephyr, there are enough places in the stadium to plug in cameras—at least, enough for the 16 camera operation last night, Christiansen said.
But for last night’s cup game, Concacaf required even more.
Signage of any non-Concacaf sponsor across the stadium had to be covered up or taken down. Even the Ben & Jerry’s logo on the permanent ice cream truck was missing, leaving just an unidentified cow.
The PFD repeatedly watered the turf to keep it cool, even though the pitch had been drizzled on all afternoon and blanketed by spring snow for the week leading up to the game. (Christiansen said he didn’t love removing all that snow by hand—the stadium doesn’t have a plow because it wasn’t designed to host games in the winter.)
The PFD needed extra time to try to make high school football lines completely disappear from the field, so as to not offend fútbol fans. So Spokane Public Schools agreed to reschedule more of its mid-week games than they originally planned. SPS gets priority use of the field, but also gets a small percentage of ticket sales at its facility.
At concessions, every drink had to be poured into a plastic cup—Concacaf is wary of people flinging heavy cans or bottles at players. That meant lots more staff and nearly double the amount of trash for one game. (The players on the bench were also shielded by specially installed temporary shelters.)
When the game started, Christiansen was still picking white paint off his hands—he had repainted the goalposts to make sure they didn’t have any black marks or chips.
Because it was a big deal, he said, to host a game of Concacaf caliber.
And it turns out, ONE Spokane Stadium may get to do it all over again.
After a 2-1 victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Sounders advance to the next round of the tournament.
The Seattle team is supposed to have a home game. But if Lumen Field is still unavailable, is another Concacaf game in Spokane’s future?
