Denver is officially a women’s pro sports city.
On Saturday, Denver Summit FC broke the National Women’s Soccer League record for single-game attendance in a 0-0 tie against the Washington Spirit. The team — and its fans — did so by a margin of 23,000 tickets.
The game, dubbed “The Kickoff,” attracted 63,004 people to Empower Field at Mile High Stadium. The previous two records had been set by Bay FC in the San Francisco Bay Area during its 2025 inaugural season, with 40,091 and 35,038 attendees, respectively. (The U.S. record for attendance at a women’s sporting event is 91,648, set in 2023 by the University of Nebraska women’s volleyball team at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln.)
Ava Bonney and Heidi Kreckel filled two of those NWSL record-setting seats at Mile High. Bonney, a network engineer, had a work emergency at 6 a.m. in Golden. Kreckel, who’d been awake for 36 hours, had a 12-hour window between shifts at Oscar Blues Brewery. But they made it to the stadium in plenty of time and pressed against the metal barricades as they watched players file into the stadium an hour before kickoff.
It was the first NWSL game for both. Kreckel grew up in upstate New York and did not have access to professional women’s sports teams. The closest thing she’d experienced was a 2015 World Cup semifinal game in Montreal.
The two have gone all in on the Summit since former NWSL player Jordan Angeli launched For Denver FC, a fan-led movement that helped the city earn the NWSL’s 16th team in January of 2025.
“It literally means the world to both of us that we actually have this opportunity to see our heroes and idols up close and support this movement because it’s so much bigger than the league,” Bonney said.
The attendance record was a goal from the beginning for the team’s owner and insurance executive, Rob Cohen. He has spent his professional life advocating for Denver’s sports scene, and a huge turnout for the home opener would help prove the viability of the city’s market for women’s soccer — and set the table to attract the best talent, from the front office to the playing field.
With only 14 months from the announcement that Denver had landed a franchise to Summit FC’s first game, Cohen recognized that he faced a logistical challenge to fill seats in the massive stadium. The team initially only sold tickets for the lower bowl of the 76,125-capacity facility. But in February, riding a wave of fan momentum, it began selling tickets for as little as $20 in the upper bowl.
The results spoke for themselves.
“Everybody laughed,” Cohen said of those skeptical that the game could attract such a crowd. “We’ll see who’s laughing now.”
While a tie was not what Cohen and the crowd were hoping for, the Summit, off to a 1-2-1 start this season, held its own against the Spirit, the league’s 2025 runner-up. Kreckel and Bonney were among the dozens of fans who gathered alongside the stadium’s south tunnel to collect autographs from players.
“My face hurts from smiling the whole time,” Bonney said.
