Attending an Orlando City Soccer Match

## Background

Orlando City Soccer Club (OCSC) is the MLS soccer club located in the heart of Orlando. OCSC's new stadium, built previous to the 2017 season, is in its first year of soccer. Additionally, this stadium was built with a capacity of just over 25,000 people, giving it an intimate, yet still loud atmosphere at games. That means that there are a lot of fans that have not been to a game already, so it is the goal of this page to give fans a step by step walkthrough of what you can expect for your experience at the stadium.

## Game Day Strategies

There are some strategies that will help you throughout your time attending the game. For instance, since purple, white, and gold are the primary colors of Orlando City, those colors are strongly encouraged to be worn by fans. In fact, you will not be permitted to enter into the "supporter section" of the stadium if you are wearing any jersey from a different club around the world, or anything that is not purple, white, gold, or black. Fans who have bought tickets to this section have been reassigned seating since they were wearing colors of the opposing team for that night.

Another key strategy to attending games at Orlando City Stadium is to just be respectful and friendly. Throughout your journey you will meet all sorts of different people: street vendors, people flagging you down to park in their lot, security, other fans, etc. Just remember, everyone is their to support OCSC in some way. And as far as opposing teams fans go, unless you are a diehard fan of Orlando who has been to many, many matches, greet them nicely. Teams have had problems in the past of home team fans being extremely rude to fans who have traveled a long distance to be at the game. Keep in mind that everyone wants to have a fun time, so some light-hearted trash talking is fine, just don't get carried away.

Finally, have fun. Sporting events are meant to be a place of celebration and cheering, where a community comes together around 22 players frantically kicking a ball around. As you enter the stadium and sit down into your seat, let the atmosphere overwhelm you. Listen and sing along to some of the chants sung by the supporter section. Take in the sea of purple as the crowds cheers swell across the duration of the game. If you let it, this could become one of your favorite new pastimes.

## Parking

The first step to attending an Orlando City Soccer match is to find parking. The parking situation around the stadium is extremely unique in that there isn't any official parking close to the stadium. There are some lots for the Ruckus and Iron Lion Firm, but those are exclusive and farther away from the stadium. The trick to parking is to be able to balance comfort, price, and distance from the stadium.

Wherever you park, you want to not have to worry about your car being broken into or tampered with. A good tip would be to park where you see other people parking. The "safety in numbers" strategy works here, so find a parking lot or patch of grass that has a lot of people parked there already.

Second, you want to keep the pricing to a minimum. Since there are no official OC parking lots, all of the parking will be supplied by the families and inhabitants of the area surrounding the stadium. This means that parking price is essentially up to them. My advice would be to find parking around $15-$20. If you're lucky, there may be some good parking for $10, but it might be for a little bit sketchier parking. Also, the closer you get to the stadium, the higher the prices will be, so keep in mind where you are in relation to the stadium while you're driving around.

And finally, there is the distance factor. Ideally, you should be parking no more than a 5 minutes' walk from the stadium. If you have access to a map, a nice box of parking can be made based on the streets: don't go further south than South St., further west than Westmoreland Dr., more north than Robinson St., and more east than Division Ave.

So once you find the lot that covers all of your factors nicely, you're going to have to interact with the flag-man. This will be the guy trying to wave people into his parking lot and competing with his neighbors. There really isn't an easy, proven way to perfectly interact with them, as there will always be a little awkwardness. What I typically do is roll my window down, and ask him where he wants me to park. The flag-man will then do one of either two things: 1) he will ask for your money for parking then and there, or 2) he will point to the exact point where he wants you to park, follow/guide you, and then complete the transaction at your car. They are usually in a great mood, as they typically make pretty good money on game days, so don't be surprised if they try to start a little side conversation about the weather for soccer or how dapper you look in your purple. If nothing else, just respond with a hearty "Vamos Orlando!" and everything should work out fine!

A side note that I do want to mention: some flag-men will flag you down on a main road, and try to lead you down a side road toward their house. If you are a new fan who has never been to a game and/or doesn't know the area, I would not recommend following these people. Typically the spots become more secluded and not as safe. Stick to the larger lots, and you should have no problem with parking.

## Entering the Stadium

After you park, the next step to attending an OCSC match is to actually enter the stadium. This step may be a little more difficult than one would first expect. First off, there are different entrances based on the different tickets that are offered to fans.

Basic tickets to the majority of seats (non-club and non-supporter section), have a few main entrances. These are located from the southwest of the stadium, along the south side to the southeast, and following that route up to the northeastern corner. These entrances are titled A, B, C, and E. These entrances are pretty typical as far as security goes: there is a metal scanner where you will have to take your valuables out of your pockets, put them into a little bowl, and walk through the scanner. There is a bag check, even though there is a clear bag/small bag policy which I will touch on later. Finally, there are the ticket scanners that you will present your ticket to. They will scan the bar code on your phone that serves as your ticket (we will discuss this more at the end of this section), and will let you into the game so long as your ticket is valid. There are then multitudes of workers inside who can and will help you find your seating arrangements.

For the club seats, you enter on the west side of the stadium through entrance D. This is the entrance that all the players and coaches use for their personal cars. You may not park in this "team parking lot," however you may walk through it on your way to the game. There are security outside this parking lot who will check your ticket to make sure that you are supposed to be using this entrance. They will then direct you to enter through the large doors directly in front of the entrance to the parking lot. Your ticket is then scanned, you are given a wristband to signify that you are in the "club" section, and your bag is checked. You may then go upstairs to the buffet that comes with your ticket, or you may go down to your seats. You may go back up to the buffet at any time so long as you are wearing your wristband.

Finally, the supporter section. Supporters enter through the north of the stadium at the "Supporters Entrance." People will file naturally into "blob" lines. Surprisingly few people cut in line in this blob, as everyone understands that they will get into the game and cheer with the people next to them. As you get closer to the entrance, you may be separated into male and female fans. This is because after the metal detectors that you walk through, there is a mandatory pat-down. Men pat-down men, females pat-down females. Sometimes they only further scan you with a more precise metal detector. It just depends on the day. As someone who has been through the pat-down several times, I have never once felt assaulted or my personal space violated. Understand that the security worker does not enjoy this part of their job, however necessary it may be. From there, you are given a wristband different from the club wristband, signifying you are in the supporter section. From there, you may go up to the wall and pick your spot based on what is available. These seats are first come first serve, so getting there as early as you can is preferable.

Now, before I end this section, I would like to touch on the tickets that I mentioned. Orlando City Soccer now has a paperless ticket policy. All the tickets are on your phone, so as to cut down on scalping and fake tickets at games. The bar code that serves as your ticket actually changes every 15 minutes to stop people from taking screenshots of tickets and then getting into games. I have never had a problem with this system, just make sure to have the ticket pulled up on your phone when you are going into security.