The third-largest crowd of the NWSL season witnessed the final game of Alex Morgan’s career on the day total attendance exceeded 1.5 million for the first time.

26,516 spectators attended Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego to watch U.S. Women’s National Team legend Morgan play for just 16 minutes against the North Carolina Courage before being substituted in her final appearance before retiring from professional sports.

Previously, the NWSL regular season’s total attendance exceeded 1.5 million for the first time in the league’s 11-year history at the Chicago Red Stars-Orlando Pride match. It is the third year in a row that the league has attracted more than one million spectators.

Last season, 1,424,208 fans watched the league’s 132 regular season games. That number was surpassed last Sunday when Angel City played the Chicago Red Stars. With seven weeks of the expanded league season still to go, it now seems inevitable that the NWSL will see attendance surpass two million.

Despite the increased number of games, the 1.5 million mark was already broken on the 132nd matchday of the season – the same number of games as the previous year. The average number of spectators has increased for the fourth time in a row and currently stands at 11,477 spectators per game.

Morgan’s much-publicized farewell swelled the crowd at San Diego’s 4-1 loss to the North Carolina Courage. In her farewell speech, she joked that “95” of her friends and family were in attendance. “I know people came from Alaska, Massachusetts, Colorado, Florida, all over the country.”

When Morgan played in the inaugural NWSL season in 2013, a total of 375,763 spectators attended the 88 regular season games, an average of just 4,270. Her team at the time, the Portland Thorns, had the highest season average of 13,320 spectators, as it did in eight of the first ten years. Now, new franchises like Angel City and San Diego Wave have overtaken them, driving up the league’s numbers.

Despite their lowly league position, the Wave have drawn an average of 20,408 spectators this season, four of the five biggest crowds of the year, putting them on track to become the first NWSL team in history to average over 20,000 spectators in consecutive seasons.

The largest crowd of the NWSL season was recorded at Wrigley Field, when 35,038 fans attended Bay FC’s game in Chicago. However, this is just one of two games this season that are among the NWSL’s top 10 highest attendances of all time, suggesting a more sustained increase in attendance across the league. Currently, each club is averaging over 5,000 fans for the season.

These numbers make the NWSL by far the best attended professional women’s sports league in North America. Attendance in the Mexican Liga MX Feminil averaged 2,072 in the Apertura and 2,456 in the Clausura.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League in the United States had a total of 392,259 spectators last season, an average of 5,448. In 2023, the WNBA averaged 6,615 spectators per game, but reached a total of 1,587,488 spectators over 212 games. That mark currently stands at 1,526,407 and will be surpassed by the NWSL next week.

Despite a season of record-breaking attendances in the English Women’s Super League (WSL), the total attendance for the same number of matches (132) reached 971,977, an average of 7,363. This represents an increase of 41% on the previous season, when the total attendance was 689,297.

Having played six of their 11 games at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal have averaged 29,999 spectators over the season, a figure that is expected to be exceeded this season with at least eight games at the club’s main stadium, which will also see the WSL pass the million mark.