It's hard to imagine Futbol Club Cincinnati fans one-upping themselves with regard to ticketing and attendance, but they did on Tuesday.

FC Cincinnati confirmed Wednesday its Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup semifinal match against the New York Red Bulls sold out Tuesday after fans snatched up about 16,000 tickets over a seven-hour-long period.

It's the latest attendance-related feat for a fan base currently pacing the entire United Soccer League, and plenty of Major League Soccer teams, by a wide margin in terms of per-game attendance with better than 20,000.

How to watch FC Cincinnati U.S. Open Cup semifinal vs. New York Red Bulls

FC Cincinnati's also drawn more than 30,000 for its last two home U.S. Open Cup matches.

Tickets for Tuesday's match against New York remain available through secondary-market brokers like StubHub.com. The "get in" price starts around $50 and climbs into the hundreds of dollars.

Tuesday's public sale was preceded by a days-long presale period for season ticket holders. FC Cincinnati President and General Manager Jeff Berding told The Enquirer Tuesday night essentially all season ticket holders participated in the pre-sale.

Many opted to purchase more tickets than they have in their season-ticket packages – a luxury that proved valuable previously, but never more so than prior to Tuesday's general public sale.

The pre-sale limited the pool of available tickets that went on sale Tuesday afternoon to the general public. At one point around 1 p.m. Tuesday, Berding said, more than 10,000 individuals were flooding Glitnir Ticketing's FC Cincinnati ticketing system at one time.

The volume of the requests crashed the website several times.

"To sell out on the first day of our public sale is tremendous and we are confirming that we do not have any seats available," Berding said in a Wednesday statement. "We are thrilled that our fans are excited about our matchup against New York Red Bulls. The atmosphere at Nippert Stadium is going to be spectacular.

"I want to thank our fans for their understanding and patience when our system went down. Despite all the preparatory measures we took with Glitnir, the demand was simply too much for the system. For those who are still trying to purchase a ticket for the match, I encourage you to sign on with us as a season ticket holder to receive priority in the future."

Many fans interpreted crashing the ticketing system, and later selling the match out, as victories for the supporters, although other fans were left frustrated by the general-public sales process.

The Tuesday afternoon announcement that FC Cincinnati suspended ticket sales saw some fans let their guard down and suspend their efforts to grab tickets.

Other fans, though, continued probably FC Cincinnati's ticketing website. Glitner was working on the website all the while, and eventually got it running Tuesday evening. Fans began trickling through the website and making purchases.

A trickle became a stream, according to ticket seekers on social media, and FC Cincinnati then made clear via its Twitter account and website the system was again working for online purchases.

The club cautioned the website might not withstand another surge of customers, but the system held up until an online map on the FC Cincinnati website indicated the tickets were all gone.

A dedicated few fans appeared to go section-to-section on the online map of Nippert and counted down the remaining empty seats until it became clear the tickets were gone prior to midnight, less than 12 hours after the public sale began.

It's not entirely clear exactly how many spectators constitute a sold out FC Cincinnati game, but that's a secondary concern.

The club's all-time attendance mark is 35,061 for the Crystal Palace FC friendly match played more than a year ago, but some seats have since been removed during an offseason field expansion project this past winter.

With assigned seating being used for Nippert's upper bowl for the New York Red Bulls match, the attendance figure appears likely to climb higher than the 32,287 that attended FC Cincinnati's Round of 16 win over the Chicago Fire.

Upper deck seating was general admission for Chicago, and therefore not as densely packed.

Rest assured, there will be a great multitude of FC Cincinnati fans in Nippert when next Tuesday's cup semifinal kicks off at 8 p.m.