As the 2015 season approaches, the thought has arisen that this might be a moment when the Mets again pivot past the Yankees, whose long run of playoff appearances has run aground.
Could it happen? Maybe. And certainly some fans seem to think it will. According to TiqIQ, a company that aggregates prices on the secondary market, tickets for Mets games at Citi Field seem to be more in demand at the moment than for the 81 Yankee games that will be played at Yankee Stadium.
According to the company, the average ticket price for Yankee home games this season, as of Thursday, was $101.43 on the secondary market, a 27.24 percent drop from the same point in 2014, when the Yankees were getting ready to stage their season-long goodbye to Derek Jeter. TiqIQ said the average ticket for Mets games was $104.47, which was nearly 19 percent higher than a year ago and also $3 more than Yankee tickets are fetching right now.
And theres more. According to TiqIQ, the average ticket price for the Yankees season opener in the Bronx next Monday, April 6 against the Toronto Blue Jays was $159.52, down more than 18 percent from a year ago. The Mets? The average price for their home opener on Monday, April 13 against the Philadelphia Phillies was $202.73, up more than 36 percent from 2014. And Matt Harvey is not even scheduled to pitch.
Chris Macovich, a TiqIQ vice president, said that his company has been around since 2010 and that this was the first time that the Mets secondary ticket market seemed stronger than the one for the Yankees.
Last season, the Yankees sold 3,401,624 tickets, the third-highest total in baseball. The Mets sold a lot less 2,148,808, which left them 21st out of 30 teams. But for the Mets, that figure at least represented a slight increase from 2013 and marked the first time ticket sales had moved upward since they moved into Citi Field for the 2009 season.
Presumably, Mets attendance will jump a good deal higher in 2015. The TiqIQ numbers certainly indicate a resurgence of interest from a fan base that has taken a beating for much of the last decade via September collapses, six straight losing seasons and a team payroll diminished by the Madoff financial scandal.
The TiqIQ numbers also indicate a potential problem for the Yankees, who no longer have Jeter or Mariano Rivera or, for that matter, a team that scares anyone. The Yankees have already tried to jazz up the 2015 schedule by designating special days to retire the numbers of Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte. In effect, the past will have to suffice this season if the present does not work out so well.
So, maybe this will be 1985 all over again, and the Mets will move ahead of the Yankees. Then again, not a single game has been played.
