NEW YORK \u2014 The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League has set another U.S. attendance record for women\u2019s hockey,\u00a0 this time at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
A sold-out crowd of 18,006 fans watched the New York Sirens take on the Seattle Torrent in the league\u2019s debut at MSG. The game also marked the first time fans have been in the stands for a women\u2019s professional hockey game at the iconic venue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard not to get choked up,\u201d said Stan Kasten, a PWHL Advisory Board member and the Los Angeles Dodgers president and CEO. \u201cWe were not forecasting this. Not in year three.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really special moment,\u201d added Billie Jean King, also on the advisory board.<\/p>\n
LSU basketball star Flau\u2019jae Johnson, King, Ilana Kloss \u2014 another advisory board member, a former U.S. Open champion and King\u2019s wife \u2014 participated in the ceremonial puck drop. The crowd roared as each player was introduced. Sirens jerseys littered the stands, and \u201cLet\u2019s go, Sirens!\u201d chants (with accompanying \u201cwee-woo\u201d calls) broke out within the first five minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard it that loud,\u201d King said about the atmosphere on the league\u2019s broadcast during the game. \u201cThis is so perfect for (the players).\u201d<\/p>\n
The PWHL has now broken the attendance record for a women\u2019s hockey game in the United States eight times since its inception in January 2024. The previous record was 17,335 \u2014 established in Seattle\u2019s Climate Pledge Arena on Feb. 27, the Torrent\u2019s first home game after the 2026 Milan Olympics.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s draw has raised the bar yet again and is the latest proof of concept that there is an audience for women\u2019s professional hockey. According to Amy Scheer, the PWHL\u2019s executive vice president of business operations, the game at Madison Square Garden \u2014 and another at TD Garden in Boston on April 11 \u2014 were nearly sold out before the surge of interest in women\u2019s hockey after the Milan Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis league is for real and the demand is there,\u201d Scheer told The Athletic. \u201cEighteen thousand New Yorkers are coming out to see the New York Sirens and the Seattle Torrent play a game at Madison Square Garden. \u2026 It\u2019s monumental.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more attention on women\u2019s hockey than ever before after another dramatic Olympic gold medal game between the U.S. and Canada, and the PWHL has done well to capitalize on that momentum.<\/p>\n
According to the PWHL, the league is on pace to surpass one million ticketed fans in a single season later this month and is seeing a 25 percent year-over-year increase in average attendance.<\/p>\n
Just last week, the league saw its highest weekly attendance ever (80,703), which included major crowds at a \u201cTakeover Tour\u201d neutral site game in Detroit (15,939) and Seattle (16,586).<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen\u2019s sports is on its way,\u201d King said before the game. \u201cFinally.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League has set another U.S. attendance record for women\u2019s hockey,\u00a0 this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[462],"tags":[5,1766,4,465,466,44123,273,1581],"class_list":{"0":"post-541377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-draft","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-new-york-sirens","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-nhl-draft","12":"tag-nhl-entry-draft","13":"tag-seattle-torrent","14":"tag-sports-business","15":"tag-womens-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116349881927113870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}