Your ears are about to understand why Lumen Field in SoDo counts among the loudest outdoor venues in professional sports. The stadium opened in August 2002 with an open roof designed to keep crowd noise in, creating one of the loudest outdoor venues in professional sports. Seahawks fans are legendarily loud: on December 2, 2013, they set the Guinness World Record for crowd noise at an outdoor stadium, registering 137.6 decibels — louder than a jet engine.
The Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII in February 2014, defeating Denver 43–8, giving Seattle its first major championship since the SuperSonics in 1979. The identity of the 12th Man — fans as the twelfth player on the field — is one of the most coherent fan mythologies in American sports. The Sounders, the city's MLS franchise, draw larger average crowds than many NFL teams and have won multiple MLS Cups.
On a game day with 68,000 people roaring, Seattle makes the argument that it is a real sports city — and nobody in the building disagrees.