Well full-season ticket holders, your payment was due yesterday. The rest of us slackers with 15 game plans have until the 18th.
I would imagine that Bill Ianniciello (VP Ticket Sales) has sent an email today to guys like Dave Howard and Jeff Wilpon letting them know how renewals went. I have no idea what that number is, could be 100% for all I know.
I would imagine that the Mets can project how the partials go based upon the rate for the full seasons. Totally making up numbers, say they know that when 87% of the full-seasons renew that suggests that 91% if the partials do. I’m going to assume they have a good handle on the walkups will be (we’ll sell out the Yankee series, we’ll sell out Opening Day, Cap Day will hit between 90% and a sellout, etc), they have a good handle on how much signing the next Mike Piazza could affect sales, and likely have some sort of 6-sigma based projection on what the final number will be.
They also likely have historical stats that suggest that each fan will spend $x in the stadium.
I don’t actually know any of this, but it seems reasonable that the business operations are solid – so Mr. Ianniciello, Mr. Howard and the Wilpons now have a pretty good guess that Gross Income for 2010 will be some number.
Never having managed a major league baseball franchise I am curious to what happens now. If it is a scary low number does it make them go out and get “Mike Piazza” to try to hit the upper limits of the projection or do they call it a wash and just try to market “Everyone’s Healthy, Trust Us!”
If the projection is a number they can live with do they just decide “eh, good enough, let’s just roll this team out there and hope the Phillies suck, worst that happens is we make x million and maybe we get lucky…we like next years free agent market better.” (The Yankees seemingly did exactly this in 2008).
I have no idea if any of this is what goes on or if I’m making up a whole scenario in my head, but it’s snowing out and this is what I’m think about. They clearly placed the deadline before the winter meetings (Yankees due December 10th, the final day of the meetings in case you are curious)….I have no idea why, but I do wonder.
As of today the marketing plan seems to be Cora, a guy who hates the Mets and some backup catchers – I doubt that motivated many on-the-fence renewals.
Does the renewal rate change this week’s plan?
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Set those DVRs for the MLB Network at 6pm tonight as they replay Tom Seaver’s 300th victory on August 4, 1985 at Yankee Stadium as part of their All-Time Games series.
