Mets season-ticket sales get spike from trip to World Series
New York Mets and Yankees fans looking to purchase tickets should be wary of scams, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. Mets fans are shown Oct. 4, 2015 at Citi Field. Credit: Getty Images / Elsa
The New York sports world has moved on, as it always does, in the not yet three weeks since the end of the Mets' season. But the afterglow of winning the National League pennant continues to pay dividends -- literally.
As of Thursday, the Mets had sold nearly 8,500 new quarter-, half- or full-season ticket plans for 2016 -- up about 2,000 since they lost the World Series to the Royals on Nov. 1, according to Lou DePaoli, the team's executive vice president and chief revenue officer.
"Obviously there was a lot of interest in the team throughout the season," DePaoli said. "It doubles down on the intensity level given the postseason run, and a lot of people are still talking Mets. We went right from the end of the season into the hot stove and it really hasn't slowed down at all."
Returning season-ticket holders will be invited to visit Citi Field on Friday to potentially pick new seats, add seats or upgrade. Many of those 8,500 newcomers will have their turn Saturday and Sunday, in time-slotted order of when they put down nonrefundable deposits.
Some of them inevitably will choose to upgrade their plan or add seats, which was one reason DePaoli declined to offer a breakdown of how many new season subscribers chose partial plans versus full ones.
In midsummer the Mets began selling season plans for next year with an average overall price increase of 2.86 percent. DePaoli said the team decided not to tinker with those prices even after the postseason success, opting to grow its season ticket base rather than cash in the short term.
"There are some teams that once they have some success, they go back and raise the prices midstream," he said. "We decided not to do that. We're locking people in on those prices. We felt it was fair."
However, prices for individual games will increase on average by more than the season-ticket percentage when those tickets go on sale to the public Nov. 30.
DePaoli wouldn't say what that increase will be, but he encouraged fans to buy early because prices for more attractive games figure to rise thanks to the team's "dynamic" pricing to reflect market fluctuations.
The Mets drew 2,569,753 in paid attendance in the regular season in 2015, their best such figure since the first season at Citi Field in 2009. "We had a nice increase of 18.11 percent, and we're still working on our models to project out what next year's growth will look like," DePaoli said.
Sponsors also are more interested after what unfolded this summer and fall.
"At the World Series, you're beating people off with a stick because everybody wants to talk to you," DePaoli said.
One visible change for 2016 will be the departure of Pepsi, which sponsored the Pepsi Porch in the upper deck in rightfield. DePaoli said the Mets have not yet signed a new sponsor for that section, but Coca-Cola widely is believed to be the leading candidate.
Much like for the team itself, winning beats losing, but it also puts more pressure on everyone to maintain the momentum.
"While it's quote-unquote 'easier' to sell your product now," DePaoli said, "there also are much higher expectations."
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
