Wednesday afternoon, Caps fans sold out Capital One Arena in just a few minutes after the Washington Capitals put up tickets for a free watch party. The Caps can clinch the organization’s first Stanley Cup with a victory in Las Vegas.

According to a release from the team and first reported by the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg, 70,000 people logged on to try and snag any of the available tickets.

To put that in perspective, that’s nearly four sold out Capital One Arenas.

Again: for a watch party, not a hockey game.

More from MSE:

Washington, DC — Monumental Sports and Entertainment related the following statement on the Capitals Game 5 Viewing Party presented by Capital One reaching capacity in minutes.

Demand for Thursday night’s viewing party inside Capital One Arena has been unprecedented, and fans claimed all of the free tickets online almost immediately. Over 70,000 people logged in at 1:00pm when tickets became available. The support and energy of Caps fans has been incredible, and the growing crowds each night at the Game 1 and Game 2 watch parties meant that we needed to ticket Thursday’s event in order to ensure we could keep everyone safe and that people could enter and exit the Arena in an orderly way. We thank everyone who jumped online to get tickets and we hope that everyone who wasn’t able to get a ticket to the indoor viewing party still comes down to the Arena on Thursday night to watch the game together outside on the jumbotron at 9th and G Streets.

Headline photo: @Capitals