First Time At Red Bull Arena: Stadium, Supporters And Those Damn Drums

SFphoto

Registered
Donor
Seasoned Supporter
Jul 24, 2014
1,797
3,811
303
38
Bay Area
So I went to RBA for the first time tonight and wanted to share some experiences and thoughts. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible here. Prepare for a wall of text.

I picked up a ticket to the Red Bulls home opener this morning for $6. Damn good deal. I didn't have anything to do this afternoon and I'd never been to RBA, so what the hell. I live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, so I hopped on the R to Cortland St and walked over to the WTC PATH station. It's SLIGHTLY inconvenient, but not too bad. The thing that sucks is that trains only run every 20 minutes on Sunday. I JUST missed one, so had to wait. It took me just over an hour from my front door to the gate. That's just slightly longer than the time it takes me to get to Yankee Stadium.

The PATH drops off a few blocks away from RBA. It's kind of surreal experience. You walk through this dilapidated, industrial area and then all of the sudden this big, shiny ass stadium springs up. It's sitting out by itself in the middle of nowhere. Getting in is super easy. They do have guys patting you down as you go in, but it goes quickly.

It's no secret that RBA is a fantastic place to watch a soccer game. There is not a bad seat in the house. It's fantastic. Love the roof as well. The only bad thing about the stadium itself is the concourse. Holy shit. Probably one of the most poorly designed concourses I have ever seen in a stadium. Look at this nightmare.

rYE3gDi.jpg


It was completely impassable. Terrible design flaw.

Onto the atmosphere. It was...interesting. As most saw from the feed, it was FAR from a sellout. I was originally sitting in the end opposite the South Ward. From there I thought that it was probably 75%-80% full. Pretty bad for a home opener against your biggest rival, but not the worst. Then I moved to the other side, above the South Ward. Then I was able to see how sparse the side of the stadium I was originally sitting in actually was. You could probably fit every single person sitting in the North End of the upper bowl into one section. It was pretty bad. The announced attendance was 21k, but there were probably 15k at most.

On to the South Ward and stadium energy in general. First of all, the three big SGs are completely divided. Which really sucks when they are all sitting next to each other. It seemed like the Viking Army and Empire City were kind of in sync, while the Garden State Ultras were in the corner, literally marching to the beat of their own drum. They raised up a tifo right after the anthem was over. Some RB fans gave a lot of shit to us about the quality of our tifo. Kind of riled me up, but then I saw what they came up with. Eeesh. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but I hope someone can find one. The content was pretty simple, just celebrating 20 years with a few jerseys of key Metro/RB players. But it looks like they did it on thin plastic instead of canvas. The paint didn't really stick that well, so it was chipping off all over the place. But the funniest part was the attempt to paint the World Trade Center and ESB. That is the part I need a picture of because it was so bad.

The Empire City guys had planned a Petke support rally for the first 12' of the game. They held up a banner that said, "Legends deserve better" which was cool, but from across the field, nothing about Petke really came through. I guarantee that the people around me had no idea that they were even trying to organize something. You could hear them throughout the first half, but the loudness/acoustics were not nearly as impressive as I thought they would be. Maybe that had something to do with the SGs being divided, I don't know. I moved to a section right above them for the second half. It was obviously much easier to hear them and figure out what they were saying. A lot of cookie cutter chants to be honest. Each section had a Capo or two. They also had a couple of drums. For me, Capos are a must. They are really able to get people in sync. Their guys were doing a great job. But they also had a couple of drums. I'm torn on the drums. They can keep the tempo if you have an actual drummer. But overall, they really drown out the sound of the singing.

There were maybe 50-75 DC fans there (Bara Brava and District Ultras). Not impressed. They had a drum too and it completely drowned them out. They eventually just kind of stopped. Not that I blame them, DC was shit today.

It was really great seeing the inner workings of an established team/fanbase like that. It is SO crucial that we keep the SGs united. It will be better for EVERYONE if we can all stay in sync. Capos absolutely need to come center stage. Especially for a group of people that have no idea what to say. The chants need to be SIMPLE. I like a lot of the more complicated songs, but we need some simple, booming chants that everyone can latch on to. The May 10th derby is going to be so huge for us. I don't know how many tickets we are being allotted, but we could easily bring 3k-5k people over the river and sing the place down. It would be glorious. Going to RBA in the thousands and out singing the home fans would help us shake the "plastic" fan stigma that we've been carrying.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my random thoughts! See you guys on Saturday in the Bronx.
 
Thanks for sharing. I'd like to make it out there one day.

How was the return trip back to Manhattan? I hear that's the biggest pain in the ass of the whole experience, because the PATH stations are too small to handle the crowds.
 
Thanks for sharing. I'd like to make it out there one day.

How was the return trip back to Manhattan? I hear that's the biggest pain in the ass of the whole experience, because the PATH stations are too small to handle the crowds.
You definitely should. Especially when tickets are $6.

I actually left around the 80th minute to beat the PATH rush. That and I wanted to get back for the Quakes game haha. And yeah, I can see how shitty the station can potentially be. The entrance is super small and there are only THREE ticket machines. They are also situatied in a really akward spot inside the station. You also can't get a two way pass from the machines that take credit cards. Only in cash machines. What the hell is that?
 
IMG_0454.JPG

The only time I ever went to RBA was for a USMNT send off game before the world cup. The area around the stadium sucks but inside (besides the concourses and concession stands) is amazing. Not a bad seat in the house and it can be very loud in that building. Hopefully we get 1200 fans to travel there for our May 10th game
 
I went there for a Red Bulls vs New England game last August, they got down a man but ended up winning. May be 70% full, definitely loud when Dax scored the eventual winner. The SG were loud but never coherent. The concourses sucked. The midnight riders brought a bus trip from NE and were very noticeable. Decent stadium but terrible area.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SFphoto
I'll be there May 10th! Btw, what section is for Third Rail that match?
 
As most saw from the feed, it was FAR from a sellout. I was originally sitting in the end opposite the South Ward. From there I thought that it was probably 75%-80% full. Pretty bad for a home opener against your biggest rival, but not the worst. Then I moved to the other side, above the South Ward. Then I was able to see how sparse the side of the stadium I was originally sitting in actually was. You could probably fit every single person sitting in the North End of the upper bowl into one section. It was pretty bad. The announced attendance was 21k, but there were probably 15k at most.

I posted in the MLS Week 3 thread that it looked really empty on TV. But someone on twitter posted a link to a Google doc with their attendance figures and if they really did have 21,036 people there, it's apparently pretty average for their home opener. The first and only match I've been to at the arena was against Chicago when RBNY clinched the Supporter's Shield in 2013 which was their third best attendance.

Edit: 21,036 has been referred to as "paid attendance"
 
So I went to RBA for the first time tonight and wanted to share some experiences and thoughts. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible here. Prepare for a wall of text.

I picked up a ticket to the Red Bulls home opener this morning for $6. Damn good deal. I didn't have anything to do this afternoon and I'd never been to RBA, so what the hell. I live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, so I hopped on the R to Cortland St and walked over to the WTC PATH station. It's SLIGHTLY inconvenient, but not too bad. The thing that sucks is that trains only run every 20 minutes on Sunday. I JUST missed one, so had to wait. It took me just over an hour from my front door to the gate. That's just slightly longer than the time it takes me to get to Yankee Stadium.

The PATH drops off a few blocks away from RBA. It's kind of surreal experience. You walk through this dilapidated, industrial area and then all of the sudden this big, shiny ass stadium springs up. It's sitting out by itself in the middle of nowhere. Getting in is super easy. They do have guys patting you down as you go in, but it goes quickly.

It's no secret that RBA is a fantastic place to watch a soccer game. There is not a bad seat in the house. It's fantastic. Love the roof as well. The only bad thing about the stadium itself is the concourse. Holy shit. Probably one of the most poorly designed concourses I have ever seen in a stadium. Look at this nightmare.

rYE3gDi.jpg


It was completely impassable. Terrible design flaw.

Onto the atmosphere. It was...interesting. As most saw from the feed, it was FAR from a sellout. I was originally sitting in the end opposite the South Ward. From there I thought that it was probably 75%-80% full. Pretty bad for a home opener against your biggest rival, but not the worst. Then I moved to the other side, above the South Ward. Then I was able to see how sparse the side of the stadium I was originally sitting in actually was. You could probably fit every single person sitting in the North End of the upper bowl into one section. It was pretty bad. The announced attendance was 21k, but there were probably 15k at most.

On to the South Ward and stadium energy in general. First of all, the three big SGs are completely divided. Which really sucks when they are all sitting next to each other. It seemed like the Viking Army and Empire City were kind of in sync, while the Garden State Ultras were in the corner, literally marching to the beat of their own drum. They raised up a tifo right after the anthem was over. Some RB fans gave a lot of shit to us about the quality of our tifo. Kind of riled me up, but then I saw what they came up with. Eeesh. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but I hope someone can find one. The content was pretty simple, just celebrating 20 years with a few jerseys of key Metro/RB players. But it looks like they did it on thin plastic instead of canvas. The paint didn't really stick that well, so it was chipping off all over the place. But the funniest part was the attempt to paint the World Trade Center and ESB. That is the part I need a picture of because it was so bad.

The Empire City guys had planned a Petke support rally for the first 12' of the game. They held up a banner that said, "Legends deserve better" which was cool, but from across the field, nothing about Petke really came through. I guarantee that the people around me had no idea that they were even trying to organize something. You could hear them throughout the first half, but the loudness/acoustics were not nearly as impressive as I thought they would be. Maybe that had something to do with the SGs being divided, I don't know. I moved to a section right above them for the second half. It was obviously much easier to hear them and figure out what they were saying. A lot of cookie cutter chants to be honest. Each section had a Capo or two. They also had a couple of drums. For me, Capos are a must. They are really able to get people in sync. Their guys were doing a great job. But they also had a couple of drums. I'm torn on the drums. They can keep the tempo if you have an actual drummer. But overall, they really drown out the sound of the singing.

There were maybe 50-75 DC fans there (Bara Brava and District Ultras). Not impressed. They had a drum too and it completely drowned them out. They eventually just kind of stopped. Not that I blame them, DC was shit today.

It was really great seeing the inner workings of an established team/fanbase like that. It is SO crucial that we keep the SGs united. It will be better for EVERYONE if we can all stay in sync. Capos absolutely need to come center stage. Especially for a group of people that have no idea what to say. The chants need to be SIMPLE. I like a lot of the more complicated songs, but we need some simple, booming chants that everyone can latch on to. The May 10th derby is going to be so huge for us. I don't know how many tickets we are being allotted, but we could easily bring 3k-5k people over the river and sing the place down. It would be glorious. Going to RBA in the thousands and out singing the home fans would help us shake the "plastic" fan stigma that we've been carrying.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my random thoughts! See you guys on Saturday in the Bronx.

We are already way more popular than the Red Bulls are, just by the local papers we get more coverage, any soccer store in Jersey which has quite a few has NYCFC gear some don't even carry Red Bulls gear. The plastic fan stigma is laughable for so many reasons, I expect our supporters to easily out-sing and make more noise than there pathetic supporters.
 
  • Like
Reactions: S1ARK5
I so would like to be at the May 10th game. I have a final exam the next day though :( I'll be watching the YES network feed.
 
It's actually widely accepted that it is "tickets distributed" which is different than sold. You can give away a bunch of seats to charity and sponsors and those tickets count, even if they don't show. I've seen FC Dallas people saying that the club is no longer doing major giveaways/dirt cheap sales this season. As a result, a recent match in which they announced 15k looked more like the 17-18k crowds they used to announce. Even the media around the Red Sox would laugh at the "record sell-out streak" they had going recently, knowing that when they had 1-2k seats unsold at the last minute for some games, they would "donate them to charities" and thus, sell-out the stadium!
So it's a good barometer of how a club is doing. If they are giving away a ton of seats or discounting heavily and people are not showing, that's a bad sign.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SFphoto and danger
Your assessment of RBA is pretty spot on. I come from Staten Island so I've always driven there and it's a pretty easy drive and parking isn't too bad. One advantage that they do have is that it's near the ironbound which has a lot of great restaurants to go to before and after the game.

My buddy is a big red bulls supporter and he's brought me to Catas before the game which is where most of the supporters groups go before they do the March. Not a bad bar at all. The March across the bridge to the stadium is pretty neat as well.

At this point I've been there numerous times for a couple of red bull games, international club friendlies, the french version of the community shield and the inside itself is beautiful. But I agree about the concourses being a mess. Very hard to get around and the concession people are dumber than a sack of bricks.

I would love to go to the game in May as I'm sure the atmosphere will be awesome but I'll be in Greece that week so you won't be getting any complaints out of me.
 
I was in ESC for over a decade. The supporters are particularly divided right now because ESC planned a bigger protest but Viking Army planned to takeover the section and ruin it. As for ESC having cookie cutter chants, the reason it seems that way is because ESC made up/translated/imported many of the songs that every group in MLS sings. You can dismiss me as biased but you have to give credit where credit is due. In recent years the innovation has fallen off, mostly because of the divided section. VA are stooges for the front office. GSU refuses to sing in Spanish and are against Modern Football but also hate anyone who calls the team Metro instead of Red Bull. In short, they are the worst.

I think it's pretty telling that they couldn't sell out their home opener against the biggest rival coming off one of their best playoff runs in history. I am from New York but supported the closest team in the Metros days, now with Metro dead I have no connection to the team anymore, but I hope for the sake of a lot of people (most are from North Jersey) who have stuck with that horror show of a franchise that Red Bull sells and things get better.
 
So I went to RBA for the first time tonight and wanted to share some experiences and thoughts. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible here. Prepare for a wall of text.

I picked up a ticket to the Red Bulls home opener this morning for $6. Damn good deal. I didn't have anything to do this afternoon and I'd never been to RBA, so what the hell. I live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, so I hopped on the R to Cortland St and walked over to the WTC PATH station. It's SLIGHTLY inconvenient, but not too bad. The thing that sucks is that trains only run every 20 minutes on Sunday. I JUST missed one, so had to wait. It took me just over an hour from my front door to the gate. That's just slightly longer than the time it takes me to get to Yankee Stadium.

The PATH drops off a few blocks away from RBA. It's kind of surreal experience. You walk through this dilapidated, industrial area and then all of the sudden this big, shiny ass stadium springs up. It's sitting out by itself in the middle of nowhere. Getting in is super easy. They do have guys patting you down as you go in, but it goes quickly.

It's no secret that RBA is a fantastic place to watch a soccer game. There is not a bad seat in the house. It's fantastic. Love the roof as well. The only bad thing about the stadium itself is the concourse. Holy shit. Probably one of the most poorly designed concourses I have ever seen in a stadium. Look at this nightmare.

rYE3gDi.jpg


It was completely impassable. Terrible design flaw.

Onto the atmosphere. It was...interesting. As most saw from the feed, it was FAR from a sellout. I was originally sitting in the end opposite the South Ward. From there I thought that it was probably 75%-80% full. Pretty bad for a home opener against your biggest rival, but not the worst. Then I moved to the other side, above the South Ward. Then I was able to see how sparse the side of the stadium I was originally sitting in actually was. You could probably fit every single person sitting in the North End of the upper bowl into one section. It was pretty bad. The announced attendance was 21k, but there were probably 15k at most.

On to the South Ward and stadium energy in general. First of all, the three big SGs are completely divided. Which really sucks when they are all sitting next to each other. It seemed like the Viking Army and Empire City were kind of in sync, while the Garden State Ultras were in the corner, literally marching to the beat of their own drum. They raised up a tifo right after the anthem was over. Some RB fans gave a lot of shit to us about the quality of our tifo. Kind of riled me up, but then I saw what they came up with. Eeesh. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but I hope someone can find one. The content was pretty simple, just celebrating 20 years with a few jerseys of key Metro/RB players. But it looks like they did it on thin plastic instead of canvas. The paint didn't really stick that well, so it was chipping off all over the place. But the funniest part was the attempt to paint the World Trade Center and ESB. That is the part I need a picture of because it was so bad.

The Empire City guys had planned a Petke support rally for the first 12' of the game. They held up a banner that said, "Legends deserve better" which was cool, but from across the field, nothing about Petke really came through. I guarantee that the people around me had no idea that they were even trying to organize something. You could hear them throughout the first half, but the loudness/acoustics were not nearly as impressive as I thought they would be. Maybe that had something to do with the SGs being divided, I don't know. I moved to a section right above them for the second half. It was obviously much easier to hear them and figure out what they were saying. A lot of cookie cutter chants to be honest. Each section had a Capo or two. They also had a couple of drums. For me, Capos are a must. They are really able to get people in sync. Their guys were doing a great job. But they also had a couple of drums. I'm torn on the drums. They can keep the tempo if you have an actual drummer. But overall, they really drown out the sound of the singing.

There were maybe 50-75 DC fans there (Bara Brava and District Ultras). Not impressed. They had a drum too and it completely drowned them out. They eventually just kind of stopped. Not that I blame them, DC was shit today.

It was really great seeing the inner workings of an established team/fanbase like that. It is SO crucial that we keep the SGs united. It will be better for EVERYONE if we can all stay in sync. Capos absolutely need to come center stage. Especially for a group of people that have no idea what to say. The chants need to be SIMPLE. I like a lot of the more complicated songs, but we need some simple, booming chants that everyone can latch on to. The May 10th derby is going to be so huge for us. I don't know how many tickets we are being allotted, but we could easily bring 3k-5k people over the river and sing the place down. It would be glorious. Going to RBA in the thousands and out singing the home fans would help us shake the "plastic" fan stigma that we've been carrying.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my random thoughts! See you guys on Saturday in the Bronx.
Awesome piece. Thanks for sharing and I agree with you. RB whole fanbase, I am talking about the Supporter groups, and real fans, not the casual fans, are so miserable. They fight with each other, they curse every second they get, even in front of kids without any regard, they will jump down your throat to make you look bad, even if they themselves are looking like idiots. Its your typical loser type mentality and again they fight with each other like they all support a different team. And I think that may be true, some still can't let go of the Metrostars. Some are RB fans and couldn't care less about the Metrostars, and they all act like they are the true SG for the Redbulls. After dealing with them for so long, online, and in person, they are a miserable, miserable bunch. Thank God I don't have to deal with them any more and I hope they stay miserable seeing their team continue to come up short and look like the laughing stock of the league. I have to admit, I do like Jesse Marsch, I think he is a good coach, and I still love some of their players, like Lloyd Sam, and BWP, Robles, Lade, I still want them to succeed on a personal level but as a whole their whole fan base/SGs and front office management, I want nothing but Ls for them, RBA is a great great place to watch a game, and frankly it is the only bright spot for that franchise, but again situated in a very poor spot.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SFphoto
Thanks for sharing. I'd like to make it out there one day.

How was the return trip back to Manhattan? I hear that's the biggest pain in the ass of the whole experience, because the PATH stations are too small to handle the crowds.

I've been out there a few times and when the place is crowded (so, generally any exhibition other than an actual Red Bulls match, lol), the PATH is a complete shit show. They've gotten a little better over the years I think at getting a flow happening and getting people onto the platform, etc... but it's still a big old clusterfuck of one main entrance to one platform, with a stadium of people all trying to get the train.

When it's empty (like really empty, like the weeknight playoff they had against KC when I got a $10 ticket the day of), then it's not too terrible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SFphoto
Thanks for taking the time to read, everyone. It's great hearing some other experiences from RB fans and others that just kind of wandered over there like me. I really didn't mean this as any sort of Red Bull hate, just some (mostly) unbiased observations.

I actually posted a bit on some Red Bull boards and got a really nice, positive response. I guess there are some pre game bars that I was completely unaware of. Most of the SG guys seemed like they would be cool to have a beer with, as long as I'm not showing up, puffing my chest out in my NYCFC gear. I did see a couple of NYCFC fans at the game in their jerseys. Pretty lame in my opinion. It makes you look super territorial haha

At this point, I'm not really sure why RB doesn't embrace their New Jersey location. Why not take the Devils approach and really try and capture that marker? I'm sure the Red Bull ownership would never drop the New York for New Jersey, but from a marketing standpoint, I feel like they could really grab a new group of fans in the West where NYCFC has no real pull.

I also found a great image of the Tifo. It was a solid display, but look at the WTC on the right. I was cracking up at it haha

etsUPaN.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lasker
View attachment 2304

The only time I ever went to RBA was for a USMNT send off game before the world cup. The area around the stadium sucks but inside (besides the concourses and concession stands) is amazing. Not a bad seat in the house and it can be very loud in that building. Hopefully we get 1200 fans to travel there for our May 10th game
My only game there too. A bloody nightmare getting to the PATH after that game.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Toe
I tried, I really tried, to get into the Red Bulls but they just never hooked me at all. Even with one of my favorite players of all time, Thierry Henry, I just couldn't give a damn about them. So glad NYCFC came along.
Same with me. I don't know if I was still suffering from a Cosmos hangover even after all those years or because Donadoni & Matthäus were busts, but I just could never get into them. I'm going to try to get out there at lest once this season.

Hopefully there will be a game that will fit my schedule. Looks like driving would be my best bet.