I think I have a solution to the Mets’ desire to have a full house while not annoying those who buy ticket plans.
This weekend the Mets are selling (sold? I wrote this Monday so I could travel today) $3.50 tickets. That made people like me sad since I had paid more than that as part of my ticket plan.
The solution?
“Frequent flier miles.” Let’s call them Mets Points and not bog down in how many points you get for what – the Mets have all kinds of smart executives who can take this idea and massage it.
When I buy an airline ticket I get miles. What if when I bought a ticket plan I got Mets Points?
Sometimes I can redeem my miles for flights. Sometimes I can fly to Phoenix for miles and $5 (did that last year.) Sometimes I want to fly to Florida on the day before Thanksgiving and I can’t use miles because the flights are sold out. I get it.
So what if I could take my Mets Points and cash them in for some tickets that otherwise are going to waste. Maybe 10,000 Mets Points gets me into Mets-Nationals on a snowy Tuesday night. Maybe a good Mets game costs me 25,000 points, or good seats are $20 and 50,000 points. Maybe I can’t use Mets Points for the Subway Series
Sometimes I can use my frequent flier miles to get “stuff.” I had enough miles at one point that I cashed them in for a bike. Another time an Apple TV.
Maybe I could use Mets Points to get one of those Seaver replica jerseys. Or a cap. Or a hot dog.
Now what does this have to do with $3.50 tickets? Imagine you got the following letter
Dear (Your Name),
Thank you for being a valued ticket plan holder of the New York Mets.
This weekend we are offering a blah blah $3.50 blah blah.
We also wanted to recognize you as someone who supports the Mets through thick and thin, and are adding 19,640 Mets Points to your account. This weekend you can redeem x points for Thing Y or you can hold on to your points and turn them in for one of the offerings at mets.com/metspoints
So yeah, maybe you paid $25 for a seat someone else will pay $3.50 for – but maybe you could walk away with a cap or a hot dog or a Seaver shirt or something.
Maybe that would take the sting out of things for the die-hards, and allow the Mets to pursue their understandable goal of wanting fannies in the seats.
If others have suggestions how to make this genesis of an idea even better please share them in the comments.
As for “Mets Money” – I needed an image so I used that. I never understood Mets Money. If I remember correctly you could turn in $5 for 5 dollars in Mets money which had the spending power of five US dollars. There was no benefit unless you were planning to run a blog in the next century and wanted a cool image.