The Seattle Torrent set a new American professional women’s hockey attendance record this past Friday, drawing 16,014 fans to their first home game at Climate Pledge Arena. Seattle lost the match 3–0 to the Minnesota Frost, but the turnout established a new benchmark for both the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) and for any women’s ice hockey game held in a U.S. arena.
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As the Seattle Torrent Instagram account put it, Friday’s opener “set the record for the largest attendance for a women’s hockey game in a US arena AND the highest attended home venue game in PWHL history!” The previous U.S. arena record was 15,359, set during an NCAA game between Wisconsin and St. Cloud State in 2017. Seattle’s number also surpassed the 12,608 fans who attended last year’s PWHL Takeover Tour stop at the same venue. It exceeded the previous professional women’s hockey record of 14,288, recorded during a Takeover Tour event in Detroit earlier this year, as well as Climate Pledge Arena’s women’s hockey attendance record of 14,551 from the 2022 Rivalry Series.
Seattle’s PWHL franchise was awarded in April, backed by Oak View Group—developers and operators of Climate Pledge Arena—in partnership with the NHL’s Seattle Kraken. The Torrent are one of two expansion teams this season, along with the Vancouver Goldeneyes. They round out the PWHL’s eight-team lineup, which also includes Boston, Minnesota, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, and Toronto.
The league recently announced an expansion of its Takeover Tour concept, which stages regular-season games in neutral markets. This season will feature 16 such games, up from nine during last year’s inaugural Tour. Those nine games drew a combined 123,601 fans and produced multiple attendance records. The expanded 2024–25 slate will be played from December 17 through April 7 across 11 locations in the United States and Canada, most of them in NHL arenas.
The Seattle Torrent’s record-setting debut adds to a growing trend of rising attendance and visibility for professional women’s hockey across North America. If you’d like to support them by cheering them on at one of their upcoming home games at Climate Pledge Arena, you can get all the info on the Seattle Torrent homepage.