Low interest in Los Angeles Chargers' home debut

The Los Angeles Chargers had their first home game Sunday in Los Angeles against the Miami Dolphins. The new stadium that will hold both the LA-based teams is still a few years away, so the Chargers will have to make do right now in the 27,000 seat Stubhub Center which is a soccer stadium first and foremost. There was a lot of skepticism about Los Angeles having football again, let alone two teams.

In just two years the city went from zero teams to two and so far there has been little interest.

Last week there was a lot of discussion about the thousands of empty seats in Memorial Coliseum for the Rams' home opener and the Chargers would face similar issues. The official reported attendance at the StubHub Center was 25,381 with unoccupied seats -- which stick out in a small soccer stadium. It is also significant to note that roughly half the crowd on hand were supporters of the visiting Miami Dolphins -- not a very good look for NFL football in Los Angeles.

Reactions

As usual in this day and age, games are well documented by fan, writers, and broadcasters on hand at the events on social media.

Users on Twitter posted videos and images of the crowd that day just like people did for the Rams' home opener. Dan Woike posted a video of the Chargers taking the field in front of a lot of empty seats. Granted, it was before kickoff and there are always late arrivals but considering the game never sold out, it was obvious that a good chunk of those empty seats would stay empty.

One video posted by NFL radio broadcaster Rich Ohrnberger on Twitter showed the reaction of the thousands of Dolphins fans cheering the missed field goal by the Chargers' Younghoe Koo which clinched a Dolphins 19-17 victory. So even for the crowd that was there it had to not really feel like a home game for the Chargers with all of the Miami fans cheering and yelling.

Note that the Chargers' cannon went off when the field goal was missed -- which is only supposed to go off when they score.

The most talked about factoid concerning the Chargers and the Rams is that their respective opening day attendance figures combined did not match the USC-Texas game at Memorial Coliseum. Also note that these are based on tickets sold and not necessarily no-shows which makes it even worse for the Rams and Chargers. The Rams may get better with attendance as they move on and possibly get better, but the Chargers being the second team in Los Angeles and not being able to sell out a soccer stadium is a very concerning sign for them.