After many months, Quakes to welcome full house
Jared Shawlee barely paused when asked if he could remember the last time the San Jose Earthquakes played before a full house at home.
“It is crazy how vividly I remember,” said the team’s chief operating officer during a telephone interview Wednesday. “It was March 7, 2020 ... we played Minnesota United. It was just when the pandemic and COVID started to creep into the news.
“I had no idea what was going to happen. We closed down the offices on the following Monday and sent everyone home.”
On Saturday, everything will be reopened as the Earthquakes play the LA Galaxy at PayPal Park in the first fullcapacity pro sporting event in Santa Clara County since coronavirus health and safety protocols were repealed this month.
The fact that San Jose is hosting the rival Galaxy in the resumption of the California Clasico only adds to the excitement.
“It’s off the charts, this is something we’ve been looking forward to for 16 months,” said Shawlee. “We had no idea when we closed the offices that it would be this long, and to have the game against the Galaxy makes it that much more special.”
Shawlee said all 18,000 tickets have been sold, but even that comes with a coronavirusrelated adjustment.
“We’ve gone to alldigital tickets,” he said, explaining that tickets will need to be downloaded through the team’s app. “We tried to find ways to make this a touchless experience.”
Beyond that, the team is putting together a game day experience that has much more of a seasonopener feel than the 11th game of the season. The parking lot opens for tailgating at 2 p.m. — five hours before the game begins — and scheduled entertainment includes beer sampling, live music, a DJ and games of cornhole. The team also will be honoring 500 frontline workers.
It’s all quite different for a franchise that — under strict guidelines implemented by Santa Clara County — limited attendance to 20% of capacity for its first two games and 33% for the past three.
“I never doubted that there would be a return,” said Shawlee. “We ran our fall season without fans and the Quakes had an incredible comeback and as we went into the playoffs (in midNovember) you could tell things were taking a turn for the worse, but we knew vaccines were on their way.
“I got more and more bullish as the vaccines took hold and my expectation was that we’d be back around the summer of 2021.”
That’s not to say there wasn’t a great deal of financial pain that the Earthquakes — and MLS — had to endure. Commissioner Don Garber said in December that league revenues were down $1 billion last year. Shawlee didn’t get into specifics for his team, saying only that the Earthquakes had lost “in the tens of millions” during the pandemic.
Despite that, Shawlee was clearly pleased that the Quakes’ franchise made it through the pandemic without any staff reductions.
“We were incredibly fortunate to keep the entire staff. It’s about 90 in total; 25 on the soccer side, 65 on the business side. The staff has been working hard for the past 1516 months and it’s something we’re really proud about.”
Success in the onfield product has been a little harder to find for the Earthquakes. They have opened their season 361 and have been shut out in five of their past six games — including Tuesday’s 50 thrashing by Orlando City.
“Playing the Galaxy is a game we all circle,” said Shawlee. “It doesn’t matter what else is happening when we play the Galaxy, that’s all that matters for us.”