This is what winning does to an organization. After a season which saw the New York Mets win their first NL Pennant since 2000, the revenue is pouring in.
According to Neil Best of Newsday, s of Thursday, the Mets have already sold close to 8,500 new full and partial season ticket plans for the 2016 season since they went on sale after the World Series and the holiday buying rush hasn’t even hit yet.
“Obviously there was a lot of interest in the team throughout the season,” said Mets Chief Revenue Officer Lou DePaoli. “It doubles down on the intensity level given the postseason run, and a lot of people are still talking Mets. We went right from the end of the season into the hot stove and it really hasn’t slowed down at all.”
Previous season-ticket holders were invited to Citi Field on Friday to pick new seats, upgrade, or add seats to their plans.
Meanwhile, the 8,500 new season ticket subscribers will get to pick their seats on Saturday and Sunday. DePaoli declined to do a breakdown of exactly how many new season subscribers chose partial plans vs full plans, due to the fact that some could upgrade their plan or add seats to it.
The Mets initially began selling season plans for next season back in mid-summer with an average overall price increase of 2.86%. According to DePaoli, even with their World Series run, the Mets did not increase their prices further. Rather they focused on increasing the number of season tickets holders.
“There are some teams that once they have some success, they go back and raise the prices mainstream,” DePaoli said. “We decided not to do that. We’re locking people in on those prices. We felt it was fair.”
However prices for individual games are expected to increase by more than the season-ticket percentage on average. Individual tickets will go on sale starting on November 30.
The Mets drew 2,569,753 in paid attendance in 2015, their best such figure since the opening of Citi Field in 2009. “We had a nice increase of 18.11 percent, and we’re still working on our models to project out what next year’s growth will look like,” DePaoli said.
Much of the increased attendance in 2015 was clearly due to the team’s winning ways and the sold-out crowds really took off after the Mets bolstered the team at the trade deadline and brought in Juan Uribe, Tyler Clippard, and of course Yoenis Cespedes.
They now have more sponsors than ever jockeying for a piece of the Mets’ success which is also generating new revenue streams. Next season, the expectations will be higher and DePaoli knows it. “While it’s quote-unquote ‘easier’ to sell your product now, there also are much higher expectations.”
Thoughts from Joe D.
This is great news for those of us holding out hope that part of this revenue will be reinvested in the team. We’ve been keeping our fingers crossed for years, hoping that the team’s fortunes would turn around and we can at least get back to a budget befitting the market we play in.
All these positive reports on record ratings, huge revenue increases, MLB’s best marketing ranking, and now this. It begs the question, is it safe to go back into the water again? Are we ready to put the Madoff mess behind us? Will we behave like a mid-to-top market team again?
However, over the last three weeks we’ve learned the Mets couldn’t afford to retain Yoenis Cespedes, never tried to sign Daniel Murphy to an extension, have no plans to extend any of their young elite pitchers like other progressive teams do to buy out their arbitration years and maybe a year or two of free agency.
Just this week Marc Carig, Adam Rubin and Anthony DiComo all reported that relievers Darren O’Day and Joakim Soria will likely be out of the Mets price range. Rubin and Mike Puma reported Ruben Tejada will be non-tendered because $2.8 million is too much for a backup shortstop. And we learned there will be no everyday outfielder, just a platoon outfielder to pair with Juan Lagares.
Now some of these may just be good baseball moves. But you have to be naive if you can’t see what it says in its totality.
And that’s a sad statement on a team looking to defend their NL Championship and an indictment on Mets ownership. Sorry, but somebody had to say it.
It’s still early, so I will reserve full judgement until January. But these weren’t the kinds of things I wanted to hear this offseason… Especially after years of hearing all those “If you come, we will spend” drum beats.
