Mets links related to the Dave Howard call

Greg from Faith & Fear walks you through Dave Howard’s first Mets game back in 1965.

Kerel’s thoughts about ticket prices and the call on On The Black

Metsgrrl’s much better than mine recap of the call

Craig Calcaterra on NBC sports adds:

I think the most interesting thing about this is that Dave Howard, the Mets’ Executive Vice President for Business Operations, held a conference call exclusively for Mets bloggers yesterday to answer questions and address concerns about the price changes. You can read a writeup of this by Caryn Rose (a/k/a Metsgrrl) here.  That’s smart outreach to go beyond merely answering questions of the newspapers.  After all: the newspaper guys will report your press release pretty straight up. Bloggers are often season ticket holders too, however, and if they think they’re getting played, they’ll not hesitate to go after you. Transparency is essential when it comes to this sort of thing.

By the way Craig I “accidentally” started following you on twitter one day, had no idea “who you are” but enjoy your stuff.

More notes from Dave Howard’s call to WFAN

Good morning Mets fans…..

Wowza.  Still not over the whirlwind.

Today I will comment on the tickets after everyone has their coffee, tomorrow I think I will tell the story of the ticket leak and take a snarky look at the ticket perks.  Again, it doesn’t make any sense to use all the “good” posts in a short span.

It has been an interesting week – I had all sorts of cool jackets and hats stuff, some offshoots of the Giants discussions, more crappy merch..and I bumped all those posts because of all the real news that showed up.  It’s a long winter with lots of holidays so we’ll get to all that…and if you are new to the Mets Police, welcome!

Yesterday I posted Ceetar’s notes from the WFAN call.

What happened was I heard DH would be on WFAN and none of the regular Mets Police crew were around…and I couldn’t listen…so I asked some blogofriends to help.   Randy from The Apple took some transcript-ish notes….take it with a small grain of salt since it’s not an actual transcript, but it is consistent with Ceetar’s version.   (Go read The Apple for a funny list of season ticket perks that didn’t make the cut)

Take it away Randy!  (In case you get confused STH is short for season ticket holders.  It kind of looks like Sith which is an evil jedi..which is a funny premise for The Apple.  Sith’s getting a discount.  Crank up the photoshop.)

Again, the below  is transcriptish but not an actual transcript and by no means not all the words that were said.   The actual interview can be heard here.

Dave Howard:  Very good news for mets fans.  Substantial number of price reductions. Average decrease 14%.  Plan group and season get 10% discount.  Excited about perks system.  Extraordinary experiences.  We wanted to change the relationship and treat our STH in an exceptional way.  Treat STH like corporate sponsors, they are that important.

Francesa:   Why would you say increases?  (Shannon’s note  – some Promenade seats have gone up.  Mike was joking asking why he’d admit it.)

Dave Howard:  Very modest.  Did a lot of market research. A large segment of the ballpark was selling above face on secondary market.  Primarily Promenade. Some cases substantially more.

Francesa:  Is secondary market a curse?

Dave Howard: Useful in regard to pricing.

Francesa: How do you get a walkup if STH dump their tickets for 10%

Dave Howard:  It’s a reality.  It would happen anyway so we are facilitating the process.  It can be a blessing and a curse depending on the Teams situation.

Francesa:  Are the Mets undergoing an absolute disaster?

Dave Howard: Not accurate.  Clearly there was a drop off.  3.2 million in 09 2.6 in 10.

Francesa: Are people dumping?

Dave Howard: No these price adjustments will be very helpful  Field and clubs have up to 25% 36% discount.

The increases are primarily Promenade and are modest.  5% at max.  With 10% discount plan holder still gets a lower bill than 2010

Francesa:  Did you dump tix onto Stubhub

Dave Howard:  Never!!!! Doesn’t Happen! We would never do that!

Francesa:  What about the STH who feels chased out of their seat.  Why should they come back?

Dave Howard: We gave every STH a comparable opportunity, in some cases prices were higher.  We engaged in a full dialogue.  It is our hope and goal to win back those fans.  Price and quality are the key factors.  We addressed price.  Sandy will address quality.

Francesa: Do you think four tier system still works?  Is it beneficial?  Does the fan like it?

Dave Howard: The feedback from STH is they like it.  Many STH share tickets and this helps them value them.  The reality is a peak vs off peak analysis.  Tries to emulate the secondary market.  Allows for Mets to make a large number of tix at a great value.  Over 30 games with $12 tickets.  45% gain in seats under $15.

Dave Howard used term Saturday and Sunday “Focused” Plan

Francesa: Are the individual ticket purchasers important?

Dave Howard: Very important.  Trying to add significant benefits and perks to plan holders as well.

Francesa – (Runs down the entire price list for some reason)

Dave Howard: Loyatly is very important to us and we want to give them something.  Our plan holders may be looking to trade up because the seats are more affordable.  We want to reward them.  Our most loyal and committed customers.

Francesa: Manager?

Dave Howard: Sandy hopes to have manager by end of the month.  Tremendous resume.  He loves doing this. It’s going to be a fun process to watch.

Francesa:  …Ricciardi

Dave Howard:  JP is an expert.  High level evaluator.  GM caliber.  Red Sox wanted him but he came here because of his respect for Sandy.

Francesa: What did you learn from STH?

Dave Howard: They love the park.  They love the food and all that stuff but it comes down to winning.  Doesn’t matter how you win.  Just win.

Notes from the Dave Howard and Mets bloggers conference call

Wow.

Where to begin?

What a crazy 36 hours and once again regular readers, I have made this a sticky post to keep it up top, new content will roll in below this post.

This evening, Dave Howard did a conference call with many of the bloggers (the usual suspects, the blogs you and I all read, and I will link to their versions of the story as I notice them.  Start with Hotfoot’s twitter and scroll down his timeline to about 6:30pm)

I got my invite mid afternoon.  Surprised. Excited.  Thrilled.

The time, slightly inconvenient.  I juggled things.  Hoped I could make it.

I wound up making the call with seconds to spare and sat in a parking lot scribbling notes on whatever I could find…which was this.

Yes I read Men’s Health magazine…but I digress.

Mr. Howard gets on the call…and let me see what I can read from my chicken scratch and what I can remember.  Nothing here is a direct quote, consider all paraphrasing.

He made some opening statements about bloggers being truly the voice of the fans, an important part of the community. I also wrote down “appreciate the passion” (If I recall, he appreciates the passion of the bloggers) and said that there was more interest in the blogosphere about the Mets than the Yankees.

– the phones lit up when the release went out

still formulating partial plan information. That info will be finalized in the next week or so.  (I believe this was a new piece of information, I hadn’t seen/heard anything about the plans – but I may have missed it.)

Fellow bloggers forgive me for not identifying who asked what….from memory Caryn from Metsgrrl went first (her version of this story is here, her recap is much better and more thorough than mine).

Next a nice fellow from Amazin’ Avenue went.  Around then I seem to have scribbled “MLB has no say in pricing – club decision” which was in response to if MLB had an influence in the ticket pricing.

Dave was asked why the cheapest seats went from $11 to $12.   I scribbled “those were selling above face for most of the year.” (quoting my scribble not Dave) and Mr. Howard also said that although Promenade Reserve is +5% that plan holders getting the 10% discount will see their invoices be less.

Let’s pause on that.  That’s what has been confusing me since the ticket leak (oh, I found out the story on that and will be sharing that story this week).   When I looked at the tickets I am actually familiar with they seemed to be “more.” Yet Dan and everyone else who sent in things was showing decreases.  Now I get it.   It’s more on a game by game, less if you buy a 15.  Got it.

The next thing I scribbled was “more days at value level.”     That’s how it winds up being less even if a Yankee game upstairs is like $45.  OK, now I understand that too.

Now it’s my turn.

Ready?

I thank him for taking the time out of his day to do this and identify myself.   He jumps in and says he reads Mets Police.

Yeah.

And…….wait for it……….

We will catch a game together!

Long time readers know that I from time to time “invite” Mr. Howard to catch a game with me.  As fans.  No agenda.  No freebies.  I just want to sit in the “uppers” with the guy and hang.  I wouldn’t even tell you guys that it’s going to happen when it does so that we can do it as real anonymous fans.  (Yes I will share afterwards).

So that’s kinda neat!  We’ll fantasize about that as the winter goes by….back to tickets.

I say “I’m buying” and ask about the weekend plans.  There are 13 weekends, you are selling 15 game plans.  Can we expect 10/5 or 13/2 or what.   Caryn from Metsgrrl took better notes:

Shannon from Mets Police (who Dave Howard openly admitted to reading!) asked about the weekend plan disparity we all know and hate. Howard responded, “It’s really the function of going to a smaller building, [at Shea] you could whack it up so you’re doing 13 game plans, Sunday only, because you had so much more inventory to work with. It’s a balance, and we’re doing our best to strike it, and we haven’t yet finalized the plans, but I think we’ll have that shortly. We hear what you’re saying and we’re trying your best to balance this and make plans available for people that they will and enjoy.”

I started to run out of room on my magazine inserts (again had I known when I left the house that Dave Howard was gonna taklk to bloggers I might have brought a piece of paper.  I was lucky I had a pen.)

Greg from Faith & Fear asked if Promenade Plannies would be able to enter the Promenade Club.  They are looking at it.

Now I’m really out of cardspace and didn’t write down who asked what…the next question is about Saturday and Sunday often costing more than the Friday game.

Paraphrasing Dave….the process of ranking games are about peak demand.  Peak and Off-peak.  Summer is peak.  Weekends are peak.  Saturday and Sunday are more peak than Friday. The opponent factors in too.

All that makes sense to me.

Then, my favorite part (well except for the whole reading Mets Police and going to a game thing) was when Dave told us about the first Mets game he attended.  September 1965, midweek against the Pirates.  School was in session.  He was in kindergarten and fell in love with the team.  He met Ron Hunt, Cleon Jones, Buddy Harrelson and a fourth lesser known player whose name I missed.   He thought the game was in 64 but he spoke to Buddy about it and Buddy said he didn’t come up until September 65.  He still has pictures of it!

He thinks the Mets lost and there were about 3,000 people in the park.  That looks like 9/29/65 to me! I’l wait until Faith & Fear writes 10 pages about the game.  Greg probably randomly wrote about that very game like 5 years ago anyway.  He’s amazing.

There ya have it!

I found, as always, all the blognoscenti to be cool.  Nobody talked over each other.  Everyone was patient.  We all get along.  Everyone was professional….like I didn’t get on and was like “Yo so WTF with the hybrid caps?”   We’re actually a pretty responsible bunch.

Dave said we’d do it again…I look forward to it…and I will daydream about grabbing a beer and a dog sometime in ’11.  What should I wear?

…..

Here’s the important links from the latest news cycle.  I am including them here so they don’t get knocked off.

Official 2011 Ticket Prices and the official announcement

2011 Schedule with the color code that tells you which game is which tier

The season ticket holder benefits. You may not have seen this in mainstream because it’s long.  Good read.

Ceetar’s notes from Dave Howard on WFAN

and let’s not forget the weird Adam Rubin/Wally Backman thing.

…..

That’s a wrap from tonight (Wednesday).  I’m exhausted but I’m going to work on some more posts.

I posted a LOT of stuff today and things will get lost.   However we will get to what happened behind the scenes with the leak and my take on the ticket prices in the next cycle of surises and sunsets.

It has been a good week for Mets Police credibility.  As always I leave it to you to decide if you believe what you read here…but the next time I say “they read MP in Flushing” I ain’t kidding.

Thanks for reading everyone!

The Mets Do Listen to Us Fans

Dave Howard was on WFAN earlier and explained the ticket price reductions and the extra ten percent on top of that is also taken off for season ticket and partial ticket plans.

Plan holders have been wondering how come we never received a discount for basically buying in bulk. Well, finally the Mets paid attention to all their market research they have been doing. Shannon posted a lot of the surveys here on Mets Police.

That extra ten percent off is great on top of the reductions you are getting except if your in the Promenade Sections. Why is being in the Promenade Sections bad? Well, thats the only section thats getting an increase. A five percent increase. The only thing I wasn’t clear on is if its for all three sections in the Promenade(reserved,box,club) or for two out of three of of them, or just for one of them? That concerns me because I have my seats in the Promenade Box section and I want to know if I am getting that increase.
In all I am just glad the organization is realizing that it had alienated a lot of its fan base and is trying to make up for it.

Now if we could only have Saturday and Sunday plans with just Saturday or Sundays in them and not weekday games. There is a reason why I have my Sunday plan. I can’t make weekday games because I work crazy hours.

Mets exercise Jose Reyes’ 2011 contract

Wow I’m exhausted from blogging, and there’s one more coolness to come before midnight.

METS EXERCISE JOSE REYES’ CONTRACT FOR 2011

FLUSHING, N.Y., November 3, 2010 – The New York Mets announced today
that the club has exercised the $11 million option on Jose Reyes’ 2011
contract.

“Jose Reyes is one of the most dynamic players in the game and there
never was any doubt about picking up his option,” said Mets General
Manager Sandy Alderson.

“A long term deal is not out of the question,” Alderson added. “It is
something we can certainly discuss at a future date.”

In 133 games this season, Jose hit .282, with 29 doubles, 10 triples, 11
home runs, 54 RBI and 30 stolen bases. He tied for third in the
National League in triples and tied for seventh in stolen bases. Reyes
was named to his third All-Star Game but as unable to play because of a
strained right oblique.

“I can’t wait to get started again,” said Jose,” This is where I began
my career and this is where I want to stay. I want to do everything I
can to help turn this around here. The last four years have been
disappointing for everyone. We have to make it better and we will.”

Since 2005, the Mets are 290-126 when Jose scores one or more runs. In
his New York career, Reyes has put together five seasons with 30 or
more triples, has amassed 83 triples, one of six active player with 80
or more triples, and reached the 1000 hit plateau quicker than any
player in franchise history.

Reyes, 27, began the season on the Disabled List with a hyperactive
thyroid. He also missed time during the season because of an injury to
his right oblique.