'We won't give up': How the PWHL sold out Madison Square Garden

Stan Kasten was in high school the first time he stepped inside Madison Square Garden in 1968.

Months earlier, the New York City arena that was then called "the new Garden" opened its doors for the first time. Kasten, who grew up across the river on a farm in New Jersey, paid 50 cents to get in to watch his first NBA game.

Nearly 60 years later, Kasten alternated between sitting in a suite and walking through the concourse at Madison Square Garden, where a game between the New York Sirens and Seattle Torrent broke the U.S. attendance record when 18,006 fans showed up on April 4.

The veteran sports executive has worked in multiple major leagues and won championships — most recently, back-to-back titles with the MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers. Kasten is the Dodgers' president.

"But I tell people all the time, with all the cool things I've been lucky enough to be around, there's very little I'm prouder of than where we are with the PWHL," said Kasten, a PWHL advisory board member who owner, Mark Walter, tasked with bringing the league to life a few years ago. "Yes, we're still in startup mode and that will probably be true for a few more years, but we’re off to a really good start."

The PWHL has struggled to draw fans consistently to Sirens' games since the league's launch in January 2024. The low point was a Wednesday night game in March 2024 inside Total Mortgage Arena in Connecticut, where the Sirens played some of its home games during its first season. Only 728 fans were there that night.

But even as attendance has sat at the bottom of the league, PWHL executives have maintained that it needs to keep a presence in New York, no matter how long it takes to build a fan base. They believe it's a market that's necessary to draw