It’s been a standout year for the PWHL looking at attendance numbers.

Throughout its 120 game season, the league drew on average 9,305 fans, a hefty 28.16% increase from last season. Compared to the first season, we’re talking about 71% more, which shows the rise of the league since inception.

Without taking the Takeover Tour into consideration, the league’s average is 8,816, 34.85% more than last year, thanks, of course, to the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent. But even without the expansion teams, the average is 7,736, which is still 18.34% more than last season.

Let’s break it down market by market.

Not including the Takeover Tour home games, two teams have an average higher than 10,000 fans, with another coming close.

The highest average attendance per game belongs to the Seattle Torrent with 12,875 fans, followed by the Vancouver Goldeneyes with 11,235, and Montreal Victoire, coming up only 50 fans short of the 10,000 plateau, with 9,950 spectators.

What is interesting is that despite both expansion teams being at the bottom of the standings for a majority of the season, fans kept going to games, and in Seattle, more fans started showing up as the season progressed.

Also, for the very first time, four teams averaged more than 8,000 fans and every team averaged at least 5,000 spectators.

After Seattle, Vancouver, and Montreal, Toronto keeps being a strong market with an average of 9,109 fans. Minnesota follows with an average of 8,143, a tad more than what Ottawa did with 8,131 fans. Boston averaged 5,991 this season, while New York once again brought up the rear at 5,095 fans.

Seattle and Vancouver might have added some new blood into the league, but it’s not like the six original teams didn’t do their part.

All six markets, individually, have drawn more than last season.

Montreal and Toronto are both up, but since they were the league’s best markets last season, the gap is not as big as it was between year one and year two when they were playing in smaller arenas. Still, Montreal is up 10.6%, while Toronto is only up 0.55%. Toronto's nominal increase is more about the capacity of Coca-Cola Coliseum than lack of growth.

The biggest difference belongs to New York.

Thanks to selling out the Madison Square Garden, their average is up 84%. But even if we get that number out of the way, the team is still up 45.4%.

Not too shabby some would say.

The Sirens had five games with fewer than 2,000 fans last season, and four in their first year.

This season?

Only one, the second game of the year. The move to the Prudential Center is starting to pay off.

The Boston Fleet also did much better, with a 30.6% rise from last season. Similar to New York, they did sell out TD Garden in Boston, playing at the venue for the first time, but even without that game, the team was up 9%.

Another team who did very well is the two-time Walter Cup champions. The Minnesota Frost saw a 25% increase compared to last season, while Ottawa did 18% more.

Besides Seattle, Vancouver, and Minnesota, every other market played one game in a bigger NHL arena. If we get those out of the way to figure out which arena drew the most, Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver are still on top.    

Part of what makes the Montreal Victoire so hard to beat at home isn’t just their rowdy fans, but the sheer number of them. Place Bell averaged 9,271 spectators this season, up 11% from 2024-25. When you combine atmosphere and attendance, it might be the most intimidating building in the PWHL. 

Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto comes next with 8,380, followed by the TD Place in Ottawa with 7,382, up 12.4% from last year. A great way of showing those politicians in the Canadian capital that women’s hockey shouldn’t be played in a smaller arena, and won't be as the team is likely heading to Canadian Tire Centre next season. 

Boston did play four games at Agganis Arena this year, and even though they didn’t sell it out like last season, they did well with an average of 5,238 fans. But even better, Boston drew 4,885 at Tsongas in Lowell, up 17.7%.

In Newark, the Sirens finished the season with an average of 4,019, which has to be considered a success in a market that struggled not only to find a home, but to draw once they did in previous seasons.

While comparing those numbers, a noticeable trend was that the American markets did significantly better following the Olympic Games and Team USA's gold medal victory.

Between that, the controversy with the men’s team, and Hilary Knight and Megan Keller on SNL, there’s been a lot of buzz around women’s hockey in the United States and it showed in PWHL attendance numbers.

The average attendance across the four U.S. markets before the Olympics was 6,684 fans over 26 games.

After the Olympics?

The average jumped to 9,368 over 26 games, an increase of 40.1%. Among those, TD Garden drew 17,850 fans, Madison Square Garden did 18,006, and Climate Pledge did more than 17,000, twice.

In Seattle, the average for the six games played after Megan Keller’s golden goal drew an average of 14,854 fans, an increase of 33% despite the team being dead last in the standings.

In Minnesota, the "state of hockey," saw the seven post-Olympic games draw 15% more than the six played prior to Milan. 

And New York saw a clear bump as well, with the team recording its three highest attendance marks of the season at Prudential Center after the Olympics — including a franchise-best crowd of 8,264.

Even the Takeover Tour benefited from the surge. Detroit drew a massive 66% increase post-Olympics, while Chicago was up 38% and Denver 34%.

That gold medal may have rubbed some Canadian fans the wrong way, but the numbers suggest it helped drive even more interest among American fans, giving women’s hockey and the PWHL a noticeable boost.

The only numbers that didn’t increase year-over-year were those from the PWHL Takeover Tour, but even that needs context.

The average attendance this year was 12,481 compared to 13,763 last season, a 9.3% decrease.

That said, the league staged 16 games outside its eight markets this year, up from just nine last season. Several of those were first-time stops for the PWHL, and results varied from market to market.

Chicago didn’t do well with 7,238 and 10,006. Dallas only welcomed 8,514. And although Halifax did sell out twice, the arena is capped at about 10,400 seats.

On the other hand, some Canadian cities helped raise that average. Hamilton drew 16,012 for its first PWHL game, Winnipeg did 15,225, and Calgary had 16,150 fans.

But Quebec City did 20% less, and Edmonton was perhaps the biggest disappointment of all with a two-game average of 10,529, a 40% decrease compared to last season.

All things considered, it would be unfair to say that the PWHL Takeover Tour wasn’t a success. Seven games outdrew the league’s top market average, while 13 out of the 16 topped 10,000 fans.  

Now let’s see how this record-breaking season carries over into the playoffs. In the first two seasons, semifinals attendance didn’t quite match regular-season levels.  

Perhaps this year will buck the trend.