OK. Since it's the time of year to have fun with small samples I'll spin the wheel. But rather than looking at numbers with two digits I'll peek at one of the six-figure sort.
It's the one that makes the world go round - ticket sales.
And so far, the news is good.
This season the Mets opened with a six game home stand and their second home stand began on a Thursday. Same for this season. So we've got as close to an apples to apples comparison as you're likely to find. Eight games also happens to be 1/10th minus 1 of the 81 scheduled home dates. Is it possible that 1/10th of the home season is already in the books?
So on to the numbers. We'll compare 2013 and 2014 looking at paid attendance for each of the first 8 games of the respective seasons.
|
2014 |
2013 |
|||
Game |
Attendance |
Cumulative |
Attendance |
Cumulative |
|
Monday 1pm |
1 |
42,442 |
42,442 |
41,053 |
41,053 |
Wednesday 7pm |
2 |
29,146 |
71,588 |
22,239 |
63,292 |
Thursday 1pm |
3 |
20,561 |
92,149 |
21,519 |
84,811 |
Friday 7pm |
4 |
35,845 |
127,994 |
24,935 |
109,746 |
Saturday |
5 |
25,424 |
153,418 |
28,474 |
138,220 |
Sunday 1pm |
6 |
26,928 |
180,346 |
29,780 |
168,000 |
Friday 7pm |
7 |
33,199 |
213,545 |
26,675 |
194,675 |
Saturday 7pm |
8 |
31,476 |
245,021 |
24,325 |
219,000 |
So in the first 8 home dates of 2014 the announced attendance is up 26,021 or about 3252 a game. Doesn't sound like a ton but lets see what that means in dollars.
Difference |
If $50/head |
If $75/head |
If $100/head |
26,021 |
$1,301,050 |
$1,951,575 |
$2,602,100 |
Depending on how much additional revenue each fanny in a seat generates the club has probably taken in an additional $1.3m-$2.6m so far compared to last season. That range is based on each extra person in the park generating $50 - $100 of additional revenue.
So if - never certain - that pace continues for 80 games (assuming 1 rain out) the additional revenue would be roughly $13m - $26m. That could help pay for some arb raises or another free agent. It may not but it could . . .
How likely is this? Depends on how the club performs. They're exactly .500 over the last 116 games they've played. That's after an ugly 24-39 start to 2013. Once they fell 15 below .500 they made it impossible to use momentum as a ticket sales tool. Even if they'd put a 10 game winning streak together they'd still have been 5 under the break even mark. If they can stay at .500 for the first 50 games of 2014 then every 3 game win streak feels like a move into contention. And if they add a player or two and get a couple games over .500 they ought to do even better than the current pace.
On the flip side there's no Matt Harvey to help sell tickets. Last season he made 14 starts at CitField during which the club averaged 28,421 attendees. Overall the club averaged 26,695 so that's a hit of 1,726/game. But one of those games was a Subway Series game that didn't sell out. If the Mets are at .500 for this year's Subway Series along with the Jeter farewell tour there's a chance they could sell more than the 31,877 tickets they did for Harvey's start against the Yanks last season. But let's ignore that and assume the current pace continues and puts them 260k ahead of last year but lose 25,000 tickets to Missing Matt. They'd still net at +235k tickets or about $12m-$24m in increased revenue.
Here's hoping there's a legit sniffing of WC2 that sells even more tickets and more importantly that money is put to good use for this summer or next off-season.