Lopez: Atletico Ottawa Season Tickets Up By 30%

It’s no secret that Atletico Ottawa boasts some of the loudest support in the CPL – and they’re about to get louder.

The league’s first-ever expansion team has settled in well at TD Place, with least season seeing the club enjoy a boisterous home crowd that averaged over 5,000 per match overall throughout the 2022 CPL season.

When Atletico Ottawa CEO Fernando Lopez saw the fan-made graphic above, he chimed in to show that the rising average attendance by match seen last year – even with the club-record CPL Final attendance bumping up the numbers – wasn’t just an anomaly.

“Less than 15 days for our home opener and we are 30% growth on SSM compared to 2022,” said the club executive. “Thanks everyone for the support!”

It’s worth noting that when the capital city club kicked off regular season-winning campaign last year, it did so after finishing dead last in 2021. There was a remarkable rise in form under coach of the year Carlos Gonzalez, and marching into the upcoming season as a newly-minted league heavyweight has certainly helped the boon in season ticket sales.

For the past two years Atletico Ottawa has also showcased itself to prospective fans with Pay What You Want home openers, with last year’s raising funds for Ukraine and the year prior dedicating proceeds to the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa.

While the club has kept quiet on a similar feat for this year’s home opener, we wouldn’t be shocked to see another pay-what-you-want initiative unfold. That lets prospective fans into the games for a taste test and, evidently, there are many who end up liking what they see.

Without the 15,000-capacity CPL Final bumping last season’s numbers, Atletico Ottawa’s average attendance dips down closer to the 4,000 mark. That’s a few hundred below what the Ottawa Fury brought in back in the day, but if assume an overall 30% increase for average attendance in general this year, Atletico Ottawa would be beating those USL era numbers.

The specific number of season ticket memberships sold by Atletico Ottawa for the 2023 CPL season so far was not declared.

The capital city club is currently set to wrap up its preseason camp in Spain, an will kick off the 2023 Canadian Premier League season on April 15 against the Halifax Wanderers.