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Most of the crowd stuck around for the fireworks show

The only thing that tempered last night’s joy on the Farm was the occasional defensive lapse by the Quakes, which led to a 2-2 draw. For fans of that other San Jose team, defensive lapses aren’t exactly rare. Danny Miller, who does PA work for both the Quakes and Sharks, announced a crowd of 41,028, the third largest in team history. More importantly, it was the largest crowd in which the Quakes weren’t playing the undercard to a larger international exhibition match.

A bigger stadium and bigger grounds all around made the whole event much more festive than the typical Earthquakes game at Buck Shaw Stadium. I arrived early to see a food truck extravaganza set up in the javelin-throwing area adjacent to the track stadium. Lines were ridiculously long for many of the trucks. I chose to wait in line at one of the gates so that I could enter the stadium at the 6 PM opening time. (I won’t bother reviewing the stadium experience, since I did that five years ago after the rebuild.) On Friday I bought a general admission ticket for the Supporters Section(s) on the south side of the stadium. Around the time I bought the ticket, the Quakes announced that the lower bowl (21,000 seats) had been sold out, with 30,000 seats sold in total.

About two-thirds of the crowd were in Earthquakes regalia. Nary a Red Bulls fan could be found, which is important because it means that the 41,028 was almost all homegrown, not visiting – unlike what happens for a game against the hated L.A. Galaxy. The rest of the crowd appeared to be other locals who came partly for the game, partly for the fireworks display. It’s important to note that this is the first such display in Palo Alto in several years, making the event quite a novelty. Some locals who weren’t interested in the game chose to hang out at Palo Alto High School, where a good view of the show was guaranteed.

The hidden factor for many may have been the lure of $15 general admission tickets. There were actually three different GA sections: supporters (south, where I sat), family (north), and upper bowl. Together they accounted for some 20,000 tickets on their own. The great thing about playing in a stadium five times the size of your regular home is that you can afford to charge less for tickets. I was helping some friends move earlier in the day and I told them about the game. One friend’s biggest complaint about the Earthquakes is that their tickets are too expensive ($20-50) for what you get. Yet you drop the price under the $20 mark and put the game in a freshened venue and suddenly he’s interested. If I had organized a group outing instead of deciding the day before to go, I probably would’ve ended up bringing 4-6 more people.

The lower deck of Stanford Stadium holds 21,000. Maybe that's the right amount of seats for the Earthquakes.

Then again, you can’t get past the simple fact that Stanford Stadium is a really nice place to watch a game of futbol or football. It’s clean, comfortable, intimate, and friendly. There’s even a sort of karma that comes with the way it was built inexpensively and efficiently, yet with clear nods to the past. Clearly everyone from longtime Quakes season ticket holders to curious Paly residents were enjoying themselves. The difference between atmospheres at Stanford and Buck Shaw could not be more stark. Buck Shaw will always feel temporary no matter how it’s dressed up, the same way the Coliseum feels cold and uninviting after Mt. Davis. That’s not to say the venue or even the team are enough. Until the Harbaugh era Stanford’s football team has historically been a bad attendance draw, thanks partly to the school’s low undergrad enrollment (>7,000) and international alumni base.

That makes it difficult to gauge what the real support for the Quakes is. Obviously, 41k is an outlier for a team that doesn’t quite sell out its regular digs and one game is too small a sample size for comparison. But it’s clear that there is a pent-up demand for the Quakes to play in a really nice venue. The team has always played in someone else’s venue: SJSU’s Spartan Stadium, SCU’s Buck Shaw, the A’s/Raiders’ Coliseum. Is the 15,000-seat stadium at Airport West enough? Judging from the Quakes’ attendance history going into yesterday, I’d said it was a bit on the small side but with additional standing room admissions (2,000+) it was probably enough. From witnessing last night’s game, I’m not so sure anymore.

New Earthquakes Stadium. Capacity: 15,000 seats with limited expansion capability.

I estimate that each additional row at the top of the Earthquakes Stadium during conception would add 800 seats. Cost is difficult to establish, perhaps $2 million per row depending on the materials used. An extra 5 rows would bring capacity to 19,000, slightly larger than Kansas City’s Livestrong Sporting Park. If Lew Wolff and David Kaval went with the same construction techniques employed at Stanford, the cost may be more manageable. 19-21,000 would seem the sweet spot for the Quakes. Is it worth the cost? I’d like to think it is. There’s one way to find out: play another regular season game or two at Stanford without the fireworks to see what kind of crowds they draw. There isn’t much time to do it before the football season starts, but it’s worth a look this year and next year.

More reading: Kaval outlines the vision at Airport West.