Dynamo Gets Artful “Attendance Boost” From Inspired Employee 

Houston, TX

As ticket sales boom for some teams across MLS, others are feeling the pressure to dial up the intrigue in hopes of drumming up interest. While moves have been made since new ownership took over to get bodies in seats, these things can take time. 

“We wanted to take a cue from Major League Baseball and how they used cardboard cutouts of their actual fans during the pandemic” Owner Ted Segal said, reflecting on Dynamo’s initial effort. “But after three months of fan submissions, we only had 63 people. We were going to just repeatedly print cutouts of those 63 fans, but were worried it would look like a FIFA video game from 2006.” 

He went on to explain how they tried a final time to save the doomed project. 

“We also looked into purchasing several thousand stock photos, but those people looked too happy to be fans of this team, so we scrapped the whole thing.”

With the project called off, the season started and the echo of emptiness rang out both in person and on broadcasts. Then last week, an ambitious member of the Dynamo staff spoke up.

“The idea hit me in the shower. At first I thought I was crazy. Being all alone in this cavernous place day in and day out can drive a man mad” Head of maintenance, Jack Torrance says. “But I reasoned with myself that I’ve got these two hands and nothing but time on them, so why not?” 

Jack set off on the enormous task last Tuesday. With a basic set of 8 acrylic paints and an almost hostile grip on his paintbrush, he meticulously churns out seat after seat of his interpretation of happy Dynamo fans. At his current pace, he will only have 40 or so done by the end of the season, but he presses on nevertheless. 

“I ran out of white paint, so this one has purple teeth,” Torrance commented as he shows me the latest seat in his ever-growing installation.

“Do I like what he’s done? No, not at all. The man can’t paint to save his life. But if you ask him to stop, his eyes start twitching, so we just leave him be” Segal remarked. “Plus, we think if it looks bad enough, Houstonians may get so embarrassed that they show up to cover the paintings with their bodies.”

The Dynamo’s next game is probably some time this week, I don’t know.

(Everything within this article is parody.)