First the info, then some comments below. From Mets Police reader Tom:
Shannon:
I emailed the Mets asking about a lottery for Opening Day, and got this:
Thank you for your e-mail. Opening Day tickets will be sold once single game tickets go on sale. As of right now the Subway Series tickets will not be sold. More information concerning the Subway Series will come out in the following weeks. There will be limited availability due to the Pre-sales we will have before the tickets go on sale. You can guarantee your Opening Day or Subway Series tickets by purchasing a Full Season, 40 Game Plan, 15 Game Plan that includes the selective game, one of our 6 game packs that include the selective game or our new 4 game Pick-a-Pack which includes Opening Day or a Yankee Game and three games of your choice. 1 game in April, 1 game in May, and 1 game in June. If you are interested in guaranteeing your Opening Day and Subway Series tickets now, call one of our operators at 718-507-TIXX.
I know you reported that there may be no lottery, but here’s some confirmation. Also, looks like there will be a lottery for Yankee games.
Faithful Mets Police reader,
Tom
There you have it. Â No Subway Series games are being sold on March 7th.
Coupla thoughts:
1.  My usual reminder that Mets Police is not news.  I don’t claim to be accurate.  I’m only as good as my sources and I don’t have a team of investigative journalists to follow these stories.  I’ll leave it to you to decide on my track record of accuracy, and since I know the Mets check out the site I imagine that if I posted something wildly inaccurate that I’d get a note.
2. Â Thanks to Tom for sending this over – as clearly demonstrated this week, it’s readers like you that fuel the site, which brings us to point #3
3.  As I mentioned yesterday, why the cat and mouse with the bloggers?  We aren’t going away (even if I quit today that would leave roughly three million Mets blogs, and probably 8-10 “major” ones).  Clearly the information is getting out to us.  Why not just have correct information out there?  The Mets aren’t keeping a secret or the email above wouldn’t exist.  Why not just share it with all potential customers?  Wouldn’t it help their business to alert fans that if they want to guarantee Subway Series tickets that fans should consider buying a 4 pack now?  The presumably feared WFAN backlash is going to happen anyway, whether today or on the Monday after the sale.  Just be honest with your fans.
This is what I read out of all of this (from managements point of view)…
Ticket sales are way down and Opening Day is about a month away. We tried 15-game packs, no response. We tried 6-game packs, no response. We’ll send out the promotion schedule. We’ll try 4-game packs, but we’re only about half full for Opening Day. Forget the lottery, because we can’t risk not selling out a Platinum game. We still have time for the Subway Series, so we won’t include those in the single game sales; we can still rope in some suckers for packs/plans if the team gets off to a hot start. We’ll tell them all about the playoff ticket opportunity with a plan and some people will bite. And even if we suck again, we can always sell the Subway Series to the Yankee fans with the help of the MLB.
Aaguero9 has it pretty much dead on. This is about suckering as many people into packs as possible but at the same time trying not to get egg on your face by not selling out your supposedly most desired games. I do use the term suckering because this has nothing to do with helping the fans, as they Mets have known for some time that Opening Day tickets would be available in a general sale (That is a big reason why they keep everyone in the dark).
Let’s face it, the Mets are turning into the Islanders, who don’t sell out opening day, or the Rangers games anymore.
My read, and again what do I know, is that you try to sell as many tickets as you can. So you chase your existing plan holders. Then try to entice new people with 15’s. Then a month later they tried 6’s….then you see the downstairs is empty so you try to bundle the good games with 3 others….and now offer presales to people who you know to be your steadiest customer. It all makes sense.
The downside is the “fool me once” scenario. Next year I won’t buy the 6 pack. I will wait for the 4 pack. Maybe the 4 pack never comes. Maybe I just decide screw it. I’m someone who is passionate to spend three hours a day working on a Mets site, yet is also the same guy that went two years without Mets games on TV because I refused to pay Cablevision the extra $10 when they had FSNY on a sports-tier.
Now now, don’t make this out to be a panic move by the Mets.
We overrate the platinum value of Opening Day based on the last two being big deals. Besides the diehards, it’s just really another cold game in April during work hours. But it’ll still sell out, give or take a couple of hundred mid-range $100+ tickets. And I bet even those sell.
The Subway Series is always a huge demand. Regardless if it’s as big a deal or not, and you add in the Yankees fans to the mix. (especially the LI ones that don’t want to go to the Bronx, and I’ve heard some say they like Citi Field better anyway)
the Islanders have been mostly irrelevant for 30 years, which is why they struggle to sell tickets. Nassau colliseum has no real public transportation and the place sucks. The Mets sold 3.15 million tickets last year even given the billion injuries. Fans are sour off that, but once the team starts playing people will buy tickets.
All teams excessively push packages. It’s the idea of getting all that money up front. If they were serious about it though, they’d make better packs, all-weekends, slight discount, etc.
Yes, the Mets should just broadcast all this information as it becomes available. In fact, this would actually decrease the WFAN backlast angle, because with all the information available to all, no one would turn to WFAN for news, and we’d all know when someone was exaggerating or making up rumors that turn out not to be true.
btw, WFAN will have a Mets broadcast every Saturday and Sunday during spring supposedly.
With Opening Day on the general sale, I’m hopeful I can at least get in the building for the blue cap army and ~1% of the Mets wins for the season.
People aren’t buying tickets. That’s the whole point. The reason you’re seeing all these offers and differences from last year is because people aren’t buying tickets. Why change it if it’s working?
3.15 million tickets (many of those tickets were sold at a heavily discounted rate) was an abberation for a brand new stadium that 90% of the people didn’t really like, though I agree it is better than Yankee stadium.
How high is that 3.15 million going to be without the brokers in the game anymore? I haven’t spoken to one person who renewed their season seats yet and I know a lot of Mets fans.
I’ve heard plenty of people renew, and plenty of people looking to just buy tickets that don’t care for being tied down to a pack with little advantage. I’d take the over on 3.15million for this season for sure.
They had 3.154 paid last year, in a new stadium. I’ll take the under and meet you sometime in late September – loser buys the shakes. We on?
The most obvious reason they are keeping the Yankee games in packages hasn’t been mentioned yet:
They don’t want Yankee fans stinking up the joint.
If they keep the Yankee games in packages for now, then they assure themselves of selling more tickets to more games to actual Mets fans.
If they don’t sell the games out through the 15 & 4 game packages as they currently exist, then they will change those packages up somehow in the coming weeks/months. Then as a last resort, they can have a lottery closer to the games in May (which will also cut down on scalping)
I do not fault the Mets one bit for this.
The whiners and complainers always lose sight of the simple fact that baseball is a for profit business and it always has been.
No one I know has re-newed. Whether co-workers, friends, die-hard Mets fans who email each other…not one. (I downgraded from a Fri plan to a 6-pack to ensure my annual Opening Day tailgate.) All these new “approaches” by the ticket office are obviously because sales are way, way down. I’m willing to bet that they are even below the projected “lower” numbers coming off a bad season and a sophomore slump for the stadium. Even positive Met fans are taking a wait-and-see approach to 2010 ticket purchasing, and really there is a large population of disgruntled Mets fans that have been multiplying since Glavine imploded on the last day of 2007. People are angry about 2 collapses, a 90-loss season, a stadium that ignored the fans and team history, countless media/PR blunders, blatant lies by the front office, and an off-season where they basically sat on their hands and stockpiled backup catchers. I’m sorry, but retro-ish jerseys aren’t really going to entice those fans that are on the fence to part with their hard earned money until the organization proves this year is going to be the proverbial “different”.
Today someone emailed me to say he renewed his 15…and I know the Media Goon did. Heard plenty of others who didn’t – including me although I did buy a 6 (can’t lead the Blue Cap Army from my basement). That’s a small sample, and I have no hard facts, but gun to my head I say that sales are down significantly. Don’t forget that on top of the disaster season they don’t have that new stadium angle to sell.
Corey, the Mets are a business. They don’t care whether the stadium was 100% filled with Yankees fans, so long as they get the most money possible for the tickets (see the Cubs model). They are actually holding out hope that they can sucker some Yankees fans into buying packs, as currently every Yankees fan that purchases now and before tickets are individually sold is roped into at least an extra 3 games.
The Mets may as well change their colors to green and dark green.
It’s amazin’ how often “it’s a business” comes up over here – but you are right. Always was.
heh. I’m sure there is some stubbornness to it. Who knows how it goes? in 2007 so many people were frustrated with ticket lotteries and stub hub over playoff tickets, that package sales went up. Since then they’ve choked, and the packages have gotten worse.
There is also the idea that they make more money on tickets sold before hand. (which is why some other teams offer discounts. That’ll be one of the signs things have taken another downward trend, saleswise) The money in the bank early earns interest versus walk-up sales. Which is yet another benefit to the new stadium, expensive seats, benefit, because the promenade sells out first which means walk-ups either have to pay before hand and allow them to make that interest, or pay more than they wanted day-of.
I can’t even equate the 6pack and 4packs this year, as the four pack is actually more expensive.
Sales, as anything else, boils down to how they do. It doesn’t matter what happens in February. If they win, they’ll sell the tickets. All the mass media negativity and the fan skepticism will be obscured when the team is in the race and winning. This is where what makes us a baseball fan and a Mets fans overrides the potential for disappointment. If Daniel Murphy has 10 home runs in June are the people that said he doesn’t have enough power going to remember that they didn’t think it’d happen in February and stay away, or get swept up in the excitement? All this PR and ticket sales and stuff is probably 10% of the big picture, and 90% of it is winning.
But yeah, you’re definitely on. I think the Mets are going to win the division, and I can’t imagine they do that and draw less fans than last year.
Well I went from 2 tix full season to a 4 pack. I’ll get some other games some good seats, some not. I don’t fault the Mets for treating this like a business, it is, but they have to expect if they put a terrible product out there sales will suffer. I mean I owned a chevy in the late 80’s. It was a terrible car so I’ve never bought another Chevy, I don’t care what incentives they offer.
Now true I live the Mets a lot more than a chevy but the point is similar- put out a terrIble product- sales suffer. The cure for all these ticket woes is really pretty simple- win. Yankee fans aren’t having these tIcket sales arguments. Haven’t even heard many Jet fans moaning & groaning lately.
Wow 162 to 4. That’s a hit.
The Jets got lucky they went on a roll, it hid that they weren’t selling seats.
Love not live. Sorry
Yeah, before the season I remember there were rumblings and wonderings what would happen _when_ the Jets didn’t sell out the PSL, and hence the stadium, and therefore the stupid NFL broadcasts would be blacked out in NY.
The Jets aren’t going to sell out. They have over 10,000 unsold seats (PSL and non) and have been hounding me non stop even though I have told them I’m really not interested, seeing as how their prices are too high.
As for the Mets winning the division? What makes you think that? Did they get better from last year and everyone else got worse? Sure it can happen but the odds are heavily against.
The Yankees did have ticketing issues. They had umpteen thousand unsold seats on the field level all season long, including playoffs that were comped. Being relative to how many they typically sell, I’d say it was about on par with the Mets issues.