If you’re on the Mets email list, you know that they’ve been sending a constant stream of emails attempting to entice you into purchasing tickets for the 2011 season. I haven’t purchased any yet and I don’t plan to until I get a sense for what this team looks like on the field. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t liked what I’ve seen since 2007 and I’m just not motivated by the slight roster changes this year to purchase tickets.
Ken Belson and Richard Sandomir wrote a good piece in today’s NY Times about the state of the team’s finances, as if we haven’t read enough about that recently, and the Mets tickets sales for this year. They write that ticket sales for this season are going so poorly that the team is literally in a state of panic about it. Apparently, they replaced the long-time head of ticket sales and last week let go of several full-time employees, and aren’t re-hiring several part-time employees in the ticket office.
I hate to hear that people are losing their jobs. I’ve been laid off before too and it’s a terrible experience. So I don’t wish that on anybody. Often, it’s not the person getting laid off that’s at fault either. Poor management decisions can lead to that and the poor managers often keep their jobs for some unknown reason.
The Catch-22 of the situation is that the Mets didn’t make any changes to the roster that would motivate fans, like me, to go out and buy a ticket plan. Fans aren’t buying tickets so the team doesn’t have the revenue to make major player moves. My strategy this year, as it has been the last several seasons, is to look for a good team and pitching match up and buy tickets on the secondary market for those individual games. I feel that it’s helping the fans that did purchase season tickets to sell some of them. Although I probably end up buying tickets from some horrible broker that bought thousands of tickets. Who knows when you buy on StubHub?
I’m curious to know what you ticket buying strategy is for 2011. Leave a comment below.
Related articles
- As Their Attendance Falls, Mets Try Giving Tickets Away (nytimes.com)
The Mets Report 