45,000 Fans Showed that Atlanta is Serious About Soccer

| tralev | atlanta | sports |

Atlanta United took the city of Atlanta and the entire MLS for a ride when it joined as an expansion team in 2017 finishing 4th in the Eastern conference and making it all the way to the playoffs. While Atlanta does have serveral major league sports teams, the city has lived through serveral decades worth of drought when it comes to having a winning team. Atlanta United plays at the beautiful, brand new,  Mercedez-Benz Stadium which opened in 2017 and shares its space as the home of the Atlanta Falcons NFL Football team.

I had the pleasure of attending my first MLS game of the season watching Atlanta United take on New York City FC on April 15th. Although the match ended in a draw, the stadium was full to the brim with fans, the crowd was absolutely electric, and both teams were in excellent form scoring two goals a piece. You can see the highlights from the game in the video embedded below from the MLS website.

I've never seen this many people at a Soccer game in my life. Over 45,000 fans showed up to cheer on their team, inlcuding an entire supporters section for the opposing team. Atlanta United leads the league in everage attendance for all teams which is amazing considering that Atlanta has been without a professional soccer team for decades. The last time that an Atlanta team won a soccer championship in a first division league was in 1968 as a part of the old North American Soccer League.

Being a fan of Soccer in the United States can be tough sometimes. This is espcially evident with the failure of the US Men's National Team to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. If you've been an MLS fan for any amount of time, it seems like each season the stakes get higher, the players get better, and the fans base growns. The sport as a whole continues to get more attention from all parts of the country.

As a huge fan of Soccer, seeing 45,000 people at a regular season game gives me a lot of hope for the future of the sport in America. Atlanta has shown that there is a pent up demand for soccer in the south. Hopefully their success will convince other large metro areas without a professional team to consider investing in the sport.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Announcing Live AI & Design Systems Jam Sessions!

Ian, TJ, and I are excited to announce live AI & Design Systems Jam Sessions with our AI & Design Systems course community! Our first jam session will be Thursday, February 26 at 10AM ET. In these recurring biweekly Zoom […]

via Blog – Brad Frost February 16, 2026

I Sold Out for $20 a Month and All I Got Was This Perfectly Generated Terraform

Until recently the LLM tools I’ve tried have been, to be frank, worthless. Copilot was best at writing extremely verbose comments. Gemini would turn a 200 line script into a 700 line collection of gibberish. It was easy for me to, more or less, ignore LLM…

via matduggan.com February 16, 2026

Pluralistic: The online community trilemma (16 Feb 2026)

Today's links The online community trilemma: Reach, community and information, pick two. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Bruces x Sony DRM; Eniac tell-all; HBO v PVRs; Fucking damselflies; Gil Scout Cookie wine-pairings; Bi…

via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow February 16, 2026

Generated by openring