Notes from Dave Howard’s call to WFAN

Megathanks to Ceetar from Optimistic Mets Fan for covering me today on Dave Howard’s call with Francesa.

I have not heard the call myself but Ceetar has awesome street cred with me.

As with all things Mets Police I leave it to you decide if you find the site reliable. Please visit Ceetar’s site as a Thank You

There is so much going on that it’s hard to keep up. I have at least two amazing things I haven’t shared yet, and I haven’t commented on today’s press release yet.

Plenty to come but in the meantime here is what Ceetar jotted down.

Large, 14% decrease in average ticket price.

Season Ticket holders, Plan holders, group sales, 10% off.

Believe customers will enjoy the perks.

change relationship, treat them in an extradordinary manner. Believe it’s among the best in professional sports in treating customers as if they are corporate sponsors.

increases: did market research, looked at data. secondary market data, talked to fans, etc..
large segment selling above face in secondary market. was surprising. Promenade level $12-$25 seats were selling for more, sometimes substantially more. Season ticket/plan will still be less for these seats, factoring in 10%

Embracing the reality of the secondary market, and helping season ticket holdesr interface with stubhub. (“sell” back to the Mets, reprint for stubhub buyer)

“Entire Season Ticket fanbase collapsing” not true. But disappointing. 94% full in 2009, to 2.6million in 2010.

36-38% reductions. club levels, field levels. 16% reduction average on field , 20% reduction average on excelsior.

the “dump to stubhub accusition”. Howard: “We don’t do that. wouldn’t do that.”

They know that “Price and quality” are the biggest things they need to address to woo back the expired season ticket holders. Sandy Alderson will address the quality part, and they’re confident it will approve.

pricing tiers: “season ticket holders like it” they share sometimes, among fans. And that helps with people in choosing games from the same set of season tickets. Peak versus offpeak. Summer and Weekends versus cold months and weekdays. Helps make some tickets available at a very affordable rate. 30 value dates versus 10. Helps season ticket holders on secondary market (the crap games they want to resell are more affordable, I guess)

Plans: Most plans/packs will have a Yankee or Opener. They are very important. It’s a lot of accounts and fans. See more individual fans versus corporations in season ticket seats. Talking about what to do to add benefits and perks to plans. 10% is included.

Expecting some to trade up on plans to more expensive or more seats because of discounts and reductions.

learned from season ticket holders: “in a nutshell “love the ballpark, love ameneities, comfort, food…but #1, just win.”

undiscussed: “Marked up all the sections/rows. but not obstructions”
“plans, will there be weekend/peak plans?”
“didn’t discuss the payment plans (which is new if I recall)”

4 Replies to “Notes from Dave Howard’s call to WFAN”

  1. As for promenade seats selling above face, I’d love to know where they got that data from!

    Fans trading up seats because of a 10% discount? Keep dreaming, that’s why you’re not good at what you do.

    The Mets don’t dump tickets on stubhub? So contrary to overwhelming belief and partial evidence, along with the fact that other organizations and venues are doing it, the Mets just don’t do that? How bout the Mets incentivizing scalpers of their choosing to unload their tickets? I ran into one…something tells me the Mets would never cop to that though.

    Sounds like mostly lip service, though its not like we could believe things he’s said in the past anyway.

    1. I noted that as well. It’ll be the same this year. go to stubhub on June first and try to find a June or July game less than $12.

      Plenty of people called WFAN and said they were happy, and that they called their reps. Dave Howard confirmed that lots of people have called this afternoon.

  2. But then again go to Stubhub after the Allstar break collapse and those tickets were 6 dollars for meaningless games in late Aug and Sept

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