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Biggest BC Place sports crowd in seven years expected for Christine Sinclair tonight

Rob Williams
Rob Williams
|
Dec 5 2023, 6:04 pm
Biggest BC Place sports crowd in seven years expected for Christine Sinclair tonight
Christine Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt will play their final match for Canada tonight, at BC Place (@CANWNT/X)

There was never a doubt that fans in Vancouver would show up in big numbers for Christine Sinclair’s farewell game. But this is impressive.

Tonight’s international women’s soccer match between Canada and Australia at BC Place Christine Sinclair Place has now surpassed 45,000 tickets sold.

“But we’re still moving tickets,” a BC Place spokesperson told Daily Hive.

Sinclair has helped those numbers, telling reporters on Sunday that she requested 145 tickets for family and friends.

“I didn’t know I knew that many people,” she joked.

Abbotsford’s Sophie Schmidt will undoubtedly have supporters in the crowd, as it’s also her final match for Canada.

It stands to be the biggest crowd at BC Place for a sporting event in over seven years.

The last time a bigger crowd filed into BC Place was March 25, 2016, when Canada took on Mexico in men’s soccer in front of 54,798 fans. Attendance for that FIFA World Cup qualifier was helped by thousands of Mexican fans who attended for a rare chance to see their team play north of the border.

Attendance also surpassed 50,000 on four occasions in 2015, when BC Place hosted the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The World Cup Final between USA and Japan had an attendance of 53,341, while the quarter-final between Canada and England drew 54,027 fans.

Other notable sporting crowds at BC Place in recent memory include the Grey Cup in 2014 (52,056) and 2011 (54,313).

The huge crowd is especially impressive given the match is going head-to-head with the Vancouver Canucks, who play next door at Rogers Arena at the exact same time. There could be over 65,000 fans combined at the two arenas tonight — a rarity for two sporting events in Vancouver.

The lower bowl of BC Place is completely sold out on Ticketmaster, as are the best seats in the upper bowl.

Sinclair, a native of Burnaby, is the all-time international goal-scoring record holder, and she might just blow the roof off BC Place if she scores another tonight.

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