Earlier today, the Mets issued an official press release announcing that season ticket prices would be cut by more than 10%, while some select locations would see a decrease of over 20%. There would be no price increase on any seat at Citi Field for those who cannot afford the luxury of season tickets (i.e. 99.9% of us).
This is great news for season ticket holders, but the Mets did not say anything about decreases to the partial ticket plans (the 40-game plans and the various 15-game plans). I’ve had the Sunday Plan for eight years now and was not pleased when they took out three Sunday games and added five random weekday night games to the plan. I was forced to sell many of the weeknight games for far less than face value because I couldn’t make it to so many of them. Shouldn’t plan holders who were forced to buy tickets to games they had no interest in get the discount as well?
People who can afford full season tickets clearly have enough money or else they would get partial ticket plans. Conversely, there are probably quite a few people who purchased 15-game plans who might have purchased a larger plan had they been able to afford it. These are the people who should be getting the 10-20% discount, not the ones who have a better chance of affording their tickets.
Also, from what I understood when reading the press release, people who buy individual game tickets can only be thankful because their ticket prices will remain fixed for the 2010 season. In the final season at Shea Stadium, there were 12 “value” dates and 22 “bronze” dates. Upper deck seats, regardless of whether they were in the infield or outfield, were $5 for the value games and $10 for the bronze games. That meant almost half the time (34 out of 81 home games), the average fan could purchase a ticket to a Mets game and not spend more than $10 per seat.
This year, the cheapest seat in the house was $11. These seats were only available for 10 games (as opposed to the 12 value games in 2008) and were specifically for outfield seats in the Promenade Level. Similar seats for bronze games were $15 and there were only 18 such games when there were 22 in Shea’s final season. Therefore, if you didn’t mind sitting in the outfield with all of the obstructions that were promised not to be there, you could go to a game for $15 or less. However, you only had 28 games to choose from (roughly one-third of the games) and you probably saw the Washington Nationals quite a bit, as seven of those 28 games were against the Nats.
If the Wilpons want to make nice with the fans due to the brutal season we were subjected to, they should start with the common fan. These are the fans that bring their kids to the games. You know, the kids? The ones who will be buying even more expensive tickets from you in the future? Until they make an announcement about Plan Ticket prices and individual game ticket prices being cut as well, I’m not going to do cartwheels. Besides, I’d probably end up getting hurt doing so anyway.
