I actually had time last night to work on things and I realized that I never posted this one. I had intended to link tot his on 8/8 but I guess I never did.
Howard Megdal on tickets…(again this from a few days back)
The Mets are drawing an average of 29,159 fans per home date in 2012. That’s actually up slightly from 2011, when they drew 29,044 per home date.
Well that seems good. Not dire, right?
However, Howard senses doom…
Through 52 home dates in 2011, the Mets averaged 30,417 fans per game. So through the portion of the season that included some amount of postseason hope, they were about 1,258 fans per game higher than they have been in 2012 so far.
Interesting. Good point. I will observe that the Mets’ ticket sales were digging out of that 130 loss projection.
It seems that the Mets have played the same amount of games at home (through 8/7) that they did last year (through 8/7) so it makes for a good comparison.
Over their final 29 home games in 2011, the Mets averaged 26,583 per game, a decline of 3,834 fans per game from their first 52 game average.
An identical drop in 2012 would put the Mets on pace to draw 2,250,706 fans in 2012, a drop of 101,890 fans. If that sounds like a negligible amount, keep in mind that 250,000 fans are worth approximately $25 million to the Mets in revenue.
via Mets ticket sales are looking dire, too | Capital New York.
Interesting take. What we don’t know is what the Mets’ advance ticket sales look like. Have people bought tickets for T-Shirt Tuesday or some weekend games?
Without knowing anything I think Howard’s analysis will likely be close to the final number.
However, I’m not sure that 2.2 million fans is “dire” especially given the absolute venom that was printed in newspapers all winter long. It was a rough rough off-season…all things being equal 2.2 may not be a bad number.