Denver Summit FC broke the NWSL’s single-game attendance record with 63,004 fans at the Broncos’ Mile High Stadium on Saturday.
The crowd cleared the previous record of 40,091 fans set last season when Bay FC hosted a match at the San Francisco Giants’ Oracle Park.
Saturday marked the first home game for the new expansion team, one of two in the NWSL this season along with Boston Legacy FC. Attendance in Denver also passed the inaugural home match record of 30,207 people set by the Legacy two weeks ago.
Both the Summit and Bay FC records were set in matches against the Washington Spirit, one of the league’s buzziest teams having been to back-to-back championship matches and this offseason re-signing mega star Trinity Rodman.
Colorado is a women’s soccer hotbed, with several members of the U.S. Women’s National Team, including Sophia Wilson and Mallory Swanson, calling the state home. The Summit attracted five Colorado natives to sign with the team—the NWSL abolished all drafts, including expansion drafts, in its 2024 collective bargaining agreement—headlined by USWNT captain Lindsay Heaps, who will join the team after the European season ends this summer.
The NFL stadium will not be the Summit’s permanent venue. Like its counterpart in Boston, the team will bounce between several venues during its first seasons as a franchise.
The team will play at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, home of MLS’s Colorado Rapids, until the NWSL pauses in June during the World Cup. After the break, the team will move into an interim venue located at its training facility, Centennial Stadium, until its dedicated home at Santa Fe Yards is ready in 2028. The team announced on Thursday that it closed on the future stadium property, the plan for which faced resistance from city officials but was cleared late last year.
After Saturday, all future home venues for Denver Summit will hold fewer than 20,000 fans. The team received more than 15,000 season ticket deposits this year, which is more than the planned capacity for both Centennial Stadium and the Santa Fe Yards venue.
The NWSL announced in January 2025 that Denver would become its 16th franchise. Robert Cohen, a Colorado insurance executive, leads the ownership group that paid a $110 million expansion fee for the team.
The league plans to add two more expansion teams in 2028. Atlanta already won one bid, and NWSL leaders said they plan to announce the other team this season.
