The New York Mets Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise is looking to attract more than three million spectators for the first time since 2009 during the 2017 campaign.
With the first batch of tickets to go on sale next week, Lou DePaoli, executive vice-president and chief revenue officer, said the team’s strong performance in recent seasons and heavy promotion of weekend games could lead them to beat the 2.8 million spectators they attracted in 2016.
The last time the Mets registered more than three million fans was in 2009, the first season at the Citi Field.
During 2016, seven MLB teams attracted more than three million fans – with LA Dodgers leading the way on 3.7m for their 81 games.
“You’d like to think it’s possible; it would be nice to get there,” DePaoli told News Day. “That’s a magic number for baseball teams: three million.
“Look, we’d like to do more. We’d love to do 3.4 [the stadium’s approximate maximum]. That’s what we shoot for here. Realistically, that’s probably not going to happen this year . . . We just have to keep growing. That is the bottom line: Just continue to show growth.”
The Mets announced their promotional schedule earlier this week and it again strongly emphasised weekend games.
“On the weekends we’re playing to roughly around 90 percent capacity; it’s not 100 percent,” DePaoli said. “Until we can get to that point where we really feel the weekends can take care of themselves, we’re going to keep pushing the weekends.
“That’s when people have told us through, at this point, tens of thousands of surveys that they want to come on the weekends. So we’re going to continue to push on the weekend because it makes sense for the fans and for us . . . From a marketing standpoint basically you’re fishing where the fish are.”
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