HALIFAX—After the HFX Wanderers sold-out home game, the team’s owner is open to adding more capacity this year if ticket sales keep growing.

For owner Derek Martin, Saturday’s historic first game at the Wanderers Grounds that saw hundreds march through the streets to the venue where 6,200 people waved flags, cheered and fired off blue smoke was a “perfect start.”

He’s confident the support will expand this season as more people learn about the Canadian Premier League (CPL) team, and the days get warmer.

“I think we’ve managed to capture something here, and I think it’ll only grow,” Martin said Monday, standing on the Wanderers pitch.

“Just being in the bar for a celebratory drink after the game, and everybody still wearing their jerseys. And all the people that weren’t ... (asking) ‘Hey, you look like you had a lot of fun, where were you?’ ”

Martin chalks up their early success to a combination of factors, most importantly starting out small with just over 6,000 seats in a temporary stadium that can easily be added to, as well as the downtown location where fans can walk to pubs before or after the match.

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The model has paid off so far, Martin said, with about 80 per cent (around 5,000) of the seats belonging to season-ticket holders.

Although the sold-out home opener meant some fans missed out who might have wanted to go, Martin said it’s “not a bad thing” to have a supply issue. If people want to make sure they get in they’ll have to buy a ticket early, he said.

It’s “absolutely” possible they might add more seating this season if the games continue to sell out regularly, Martin said, but his theory has always been it’s better to have a full venue than a large one — and with a modular stadium “we can grow as we need to grow.”

For example, Martin said if there’s rush of season tickets sold over the next couple of weeks thanks to early excitement, and there’s only around 500 left available every game, it would be “wise” to look at how more seating could be added.

Looking around the field, Martin points out gaps where more risers could be added to close gaps in the existing stands, or some areas could be pushed back to allow for a few more thousand people.

“I think we could definitely get to (8,000) to 10,000 over time, who knows,” Martin said.

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Ed McHugh, business professor at Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), said Monday the Wanderers boom has been a “neat phenomenon” to watch.

Besides starting small and having the stadium downtown, McHugh said another factor he sees in the success of the Wanderers is the youth factor, since soccer is the “most-played sport in Nova Scotia by far.” Once you have kids interested, then you’ve got the families, he said.

According to McHugh, what happened Saturday with the packed bars and march up Sackville St. to the field was “unheard of in this town,” which tends to have a more conservative culture. That boisterous soccer experience and fan devotion also plays a part, he said, as well as what he sees as a “pent-up demand” for something in Halifax to finally work.

“We’re not complaining to each other about the cost of this and the cost of that,” McHugh said.

The fact that the Wanderers ownership team wasn’t openly looking for government money “put them in a great spot in a lot of people’s brains,” McHugh said, contrasting with the CFL group looking for public money to build a proposed Dartmouth stadium.

McHugh said he wouldn’t be surprised to see the CFL group try to bring the Wanderers on for their Shannon Park project, but Martin said they have “no interest” in doing that right now.

If even one of the pieces of their model was to be taken away it wouldn’t work as well, Martin said. If the soccer team was across the harbour in Shannon Park where there are no bars for pre-game activities and nearly everyone would have to drive, he said the atmosphere wouldn’t be the same.

“We don’t want to change it. We want to kind of ride this out and see how it goes,” Martin said.

The Wanderers next play in Winnipeg this Saturday to take on Valour FC.

Halifax fans will have two chances to catch the team at home later this month in regular CPL matches. They play Wednesday, May 29 against York9 FC and Saturday, June 1 against Pacific FC.

Before that, they’ll play Vaughan SC at home on May 22 during the first round of the Canadian Championship, which involves teams from various leagues across the country. It’s the only route Canadian professional clubs can take into the CONCACAF Champions League (continental league of North America, Central America and the Caribbean) which then leads into the FIFA Club World Cup.

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