What exactly will it take to fill those empty seats at Citi Field, besides the obvious, winning? Is it really as simple as just plain winning to get fans to spend their hard earned money and come out to the ballpark, or will it take more than that with this team?
Many fans are fed up with Mets ownership. Would a partial, or even full sale of the team be what drives fans back to Citi Field?
According to David Waldstein of the New York Times, attendance for the 2010 season dropped 19 percent from the previous year when 3,154,270 fans turned out for Citi Field's inaugural season.
If the first seven games are any indication of what attendance will be in the 2011 season, the Mets can't be happy.
As far as announced attendance goes in 2011, what the Mets announce and what I've seen on TV appears to be far different.
As we learned with the Home Opener, the Mets get a little confused when it comes to well...counting. The attendance for the Home Opener was announced to be a sell out at 41,075.
Um...the park holds 41,800.
It doesn't matter what the Mets report though. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there are more empty seats than there are fans.
There was some optimism about this team coming out of Spring Training. With a new front office, fans were starting to believe that the team might be working its way back from the dismal seasons of years past.
How quickly that optimism faded though. When the Mets squandered any chance they had to comeback in the Home Opener, the crowd cleared out in a hurry.
Many of them aren't returning either.
So again, I ask, what would it take to get you, the fan, to pay your hard earned money to see this team?
This is an easy one. don't trade Reyes. Don't "rebuild" so to speak. If they keep Reyes, even if the team is playing at last years 78 win pace, i can see 20k fan in August. if they trade him..5k wouldn't surprise me.
ReplyDeletebut it's April, it's cold and rainy. if/when they get back to .500 and beyond and look exciting, people will come. maybe not 40k, but a lot more than are coming now.
In the last game of the last home stand... fans were chanting "SELL THE TEAM, SELL THE TEAM". Nobody wants the Wilpons to own this team anymore. It's time to get someone worth BILLIONS of dollars and a HUGE ego to own the team... like hedgefund honco Steven A. Cohen.
ReplyDeleteThis goes back to my post from a few days back. Both of you make the point of what management needs to do (e.g. keep Reyes, new ownership, etc.), but what about the players? At the end of the day, it's the players out on the field who are losing these games.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was -- Go see the Brooklyn Cyclones.
ReplyDeleteBut a day at Shea, err, umm, I mean a day at Citi Field is still a day of baseball, or, well, a few hours anyway. Cubs fans have faithfully kept showing up since they last won in 1908. Most Mets fans probably have a much lower Don't Give A Crap threshold, especially for a bad team, but a few hours at the ballpark, win or lose, can't be beat by much else in the world.
Then again, until the team is good, that money spent could be better spent on a thousand or so charities to help people in need.
Just watch on TV.