http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/sports/baseball/03sny.html?_r=1

Sterling Equtities has to be iin deep financial trouble for them having to skim back on the Mets which is generating huge amounts for the parent company through SNY.

And the few that do wind up sitting in the nosebleeds or the OF!

If you think the team is going in the right direction then thats the time to buy your season plan and hold onto it!
because if you wait until they ARE good it’s too late and you will miss the whole damn thing!

Didn’t hurt that was making money hand over fist back then either! LOL
Reganomics! and low unemployment!
the TV business went from 26 channels to 99 in a year flat! Otherwise I probably would have had to give them up right around 83 before all the goodness came about!

Putting up that kind of money on the ’79-’83 Mets while everyone else was fleeing cross town.

Glad it paid off so well for you, you certainly deserved it.

Which is why I thought putting the money we spent on the PEN towards keeping Reyes might have at least kept attendance flat compared to last year so they might gain more from the cuts they made with Perez, Castillo, Beltran and K-Rod!\

Like a gunshot victim, first step is to stop the bleeding and then when the patient is stable you go about repairing the damage and removing the bullets!

Cutting budget only works when the cuts don’t affect the revenue.
Not sure cuttting Reyes had no affect on that revenue I’m sure signing Rauch and Francisco didn’t help that situation any!

And with Torre and Bamberger managing there were a lot of BETTER seats available each year! LOL

It wasn’t directly behind home it was one section off to the 1B side but it was prime Foul Ball territory especially when Sid was on the mound!
Lots of fastballs to RHers came our way! LOL

The Usher in my section made a TON of money every game taking money to sit people in all those empty seats! I knew just about all of the regular folks who had seats around us and I could tell most did not show except on weekends and most people in the section really didn’t belong there!

They may go down as losses on Sterling’s books but not the Mets.

Yes they have to pay a loan off but that truly is no different than your average Mortgage payment to a real estate company.

While it might be harder to make that payment with lower attendance, even a full house would not pay that bill off each year!
If they make just $60 per ticket sold and sell 5 mil tickets (impossible at Citi) they would only make 282 Million total!

You guys can keep adding up every debt the Wilpons have that you can find!
But it always comes back to the point…
If you don’t go it won’t get fixed!

Not saying we have an obligation to go nor that we are BAD for not going!
Just explaining the plain facts that until we start going to see them at Citi instead of SNY the mets will be in financial difficulty and no owner on the planet could put enough of his own money into the pot to fix it!

The ONLY thing they could do to fix it is what you suggest they should not do!
Go out, buy some STAR TALENT to draw in the fans who get hope based off that signing and buying enough talent to refill that stadium on a daily basis!

Winning a lot might help next year but will not solve this year’s problem, and cutting more will only make the situation worse!
All these suggestions about and mixing of the Stadium and SNY money is pointless. They are seperate businesses and if they play any part it will just be more borrowing from peter to pay paul!

They need to get people in the stands, they need those corporate full season ticket sales to come back! They need the economy to pick up and they need some luck that the team will play well and the FO to manage well enough to not sabotage next year’s season ticket sales!

For my money you couldn’t beat the old Loge seats behind the plate.

Your right about companies and the lack of using those tickets. I used to get them from the company I worked for (section 1 Loge Box) and going to school at night I couldn’t use them all that often but we were told constantly we were the only ones using the tickets at all. No wonder they were always available.

Years later after I had moved on I still headed to those seats and they were still mostly empty even in 86-91.

Very strange how all those tickets can go unused when for just the cost of trainfare you could have great seats to almost any game you wanted.

Then it’s just throwing good money after bad!
This is my point when I say signing someone sells more tickets than Winning does!
Signing someone encourages those season ticket sales that pay the bills regardless of if they go or not!
Winning will help the following year but the majority of the uptick is in you and me going to a few extra games more than we would have! 4 games is not quite the financial boon as an extra 81 game sales are!

This June 52 M in bond interest is due and coincidently our payroll dropped by the same amount.

Between the loss of 500 M they thought they had, the lawsuit seeking to collect up to 386 M, the bond payments, the general downturn in the economy and the revenue projections being well below forecasts done back in 2005 – 2008 and the general lack of enthusiasm of Met Fans caused by 15 years of big expectations followed by big disappointment with just a couple of exceptions the belt was tightened.

The only way to smooth out the volatile attendance is to stop importing the expensive, but short lived quick fix to solve all the defficincies on the roster every year.

Build up so we have a well conceived 25 man roster where no one is complacent due to a lack of competition from within, have credible back ups and end of the pen depth WITH upside and the next generation serving as AA and AAA depth. Then go out and get a type A and a salary dump or two.

Having players here for 8-10 years, rather than 3-4 will go a long way toward flattening out the dips in attendance and will keep options open for trades. Even the rare FA who comes here and does preform is frequently an unlikely trade candidate since only a few teams can afford to pick up 15-25 M in salary and those that don’t preform are completely untradeable at any price and that’s at least half of them.

Section 3 Loge In the old Shea!

On a regular day most seats remained empty except on weekends (even in 85 and 86!)
When the playoffs and WS hit, all those seats were filled by suits and celebrities! The few who were in those seats many times had to get up and move because the usher took some money and gave them a seat when the real ticket holder showed up!

The majority of ticket sales in NY are all corporate purchases who rarely use those seats unless there is something special happening like a playoff race, a Met fan client or their opponent is in town or there is a playoff where those tickets are hot items and clients call in favors!

In a bad economy those tickets go unsold and it kills you!
If the economy picks up and they start buying those tickets again then the financial situation will change, but I fear that may not happen fast enough to save Wright and may even cost us Davis if it goes on too long!

Like I have said before, If you owned 51% of Verizon Stock and Verizon lost money, should they (would they?) call you up and ask you to send a check for 70 Million to make up for their money problems?

NOPE!

And if they did you would do as the WIlpons have done and say Hey get your budget in order, cut your spending if you have to but you have to find a way to pay your own bills!

With employment uncertainty and people having mortgage issues they too will give up their limited sunday 10 game plans as well to use the money for more critical needs.

The fact they lost HALF of thier premium seat sales which is basically all those seats that they reserve for Full Season packages and it cost them 50 Mil just goes to show that it wasn’t spending, it wasn’t Madoff that caused these issues.

Bad Economics + bad Baseball = Bad Ticket Sales and a loss of 70 Million!

Anyone question why they have financial issues now?

From 99Mil to 50Mil?

Funny that 50 Mil constitutes the majority of the team losses last year!
Couple it with the 11 MIl in concessions, 3 Mil in Parking and the other losses for day of game sales and it is clear that Madoff nor the Wilpons have anything to do at all with the Met Financial problems!

The Mets in 2010 played .488 baseball. But their home record, where presumably most NY fans would see them play, was 47-34. Pretty good. In 2011, the Mets played .475 baseball, not quite as good as the year before. But they were only 34-47 at home. Stinko. So what caused the attendance slip? Was it the crummy business cycle or the crummy home performance? Mets attendance dropped 8.1% between the two years. The jury is still out on this, but both factors probably played a role in the decline,

The Yankees will help us clarify the attendance issue. The Yankees in 2010 played .586 baseball. Their home record was 52-29, so it likely helped drive up sales. In 2011, the Yankees played better, compiling a .599 percentage. Excellent — better than the year before. Their home record was the same as the year before, 52-29. So we have the basis for a pretty good comparison. Yankees attendance dropped 7.8% between the two years, so why the drop?

In my view, the most likely single reason is 2011 was a bad year for money spending and money making in the Big Apple. As said above in a prior post, Crain’s New York Business reports that the value of construction starts in New York City fell 31% last year. There was less money in New York City to spend. Less money made by residents and New York companies means less money spent and fewer tickets sold at the ball park.

Take a look at Detroit – of all places. Their opening day tickets went on sale the other day and completely sold out in 45 minutes. Can’t tell me Prince Fielder and the perception of an exciting season for the Tigers is not the main reason.