Despite their best efforts to find a more permanent home, the NWSL’s Chicago Stars announced this week that they will continue to play their games at Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium in Evanston in 2027.
This will be the second consecutive season that the Stars play at the 12,000 seat venue, which was the temporary home of Northwestern football while their new stadium was being constructed.
And speaking of Ryan Field, the Stars have continually made overtures about moving to the new Evanston stadium as their permanent home, but pushback from the local community has seemingly stymied those plans.
But the question needs to be asked: would moving to a different stadium result in better attendance for the team? And could the Stars even come close to filling it? Or is Martin Stadium the more appropriate place for them right now?
The Chicago Stars attendance problems
The Stars have averaged about 4,400 fans per game at Martin Stadium, ranging from a low of 1,821 to a high of 6,678, placing them dead last in per-game attendance across all NWSL teams.
Meanwhile, the Denver Summit expansion team, which has bounced between three non-permanent homes in Denver this season, has averaged nearly 19,000 fans per game. Even if you remove the 63,000 fans who attended their inaugural match at Mile High Stadium, the team is still averaging 14,000 fans between their matches at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park and Centennial Stadium.
Meanwhile, the Boston Legacy, NWSL’s other new franchise, has averaged over 10,700 fans while splitting time between Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, where the New England Patriots and Revolution play.
Across the NWSL, the average attendance per game is about 11,000, so the Stars’ 4,400 average looks quite bad when compared against the rest of the field.
Bottom line
So would moving to the 35,000-seat Ryan Field just make things worse? Or would the newer, fancier stadium draw new fans to matches? There’s no way to know until it happens, but for the moment, the Stars will continue to play at Martin Stadium while they try to create a fan base.
