Mets say ticket sales seeing a huge increase with signing of Juan Soto
Mets' Juan Soto poses at Citi Field on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp
Want to buy a ticket to see Juan Soto at Citi Field next season?
Better hurry.
Nine days after news broke that the Mets had reached an agreement to sign Soto for 15 years and $765 million, the club told Newsday on Tuesday that ticket sales are going through the roof.
The Mets reached an agreement with Soto, the former Yankees slugger, late in the evening on Dec. 8. In a happy coincidence — and that’s what it was — single-game tickets went on sale on the morning of Dec. 9.
For the first week, from Dec. 9-15, the team more than doubled the amount of tickets it sold in the same week in 2023.
According to the Mets, it took 45 minutes on Dec. 9 for the club to sell more tickets than it did on the entire first day of sales for the 2024 season.
Single-game tickets for the April 4 home opener against Toronto are sold out with the exception of limited view and standing room only, the Mets said.
Opening Day tickets are still available as part of season-ticket packages, the club said. The Mets said they are on pace to sell the most new season tickets in one offseason since Citi Field opened in 2009.
For the first day as a whole, the Mets sold more than three times the number of tickets they did for the first day in 2023, and set a revenue record for the first day of sales. The Delta Sky360 club seats are sold out, the team said, but the Mets are starting a wait list for that area.
The excitement even extends to spring training: The Mets said they sold twice as many spring training tickets after the Soto news broke than they had the week before.
“I want to thank Mets fans for responding to the Soto signing,” Mets owner Steve Cohen posted on X on Dec. 14. “Ticket sales exploded this week vs. last week. We were 18th in MLB attendance last year. Any predictions where we end up this year?”
It’s not just the Soto signing that has energized Mets fans. Last season’s unexpected run to the NLCS had fans excited heading into 2025 even before the Soto signing.
But the Soto signing took the ticket-buying fervor to a whole new level. Mets fans had to pinch themselves when the news broke late on a Sunday night.
“I had a cold and I thought I was a little delirious,” said season-ticket holder Caitlin Buthmann, 36, of Riverhead. “I’m looking at my phone and I’m going, ‘This can’t really be true. This can’t really have happened.’ And then all of a sudden, my phone started blowing up. I was like, ‘Wow, this is really real.’ “
The ramped-up ticket-buying took place after a 2024 season in which the Mets' regular-season home attendance was down 9.5% from 2023, according to the team. In April, the club twice set a Citi Field record for the lowest non-COVID single-game attendance.
Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo had to implore fans to show up during the heat of a playoff race in mid-September. Fans responded as nearly 165,000 spectators jammed the ballpark for the final series against the Phillies, a Citi Field record for a four-game set, and the Mets sold out all five of their postseason games.
David McCann, 67, of Port Washington, said he was trying to “stick to my budget of going to two games per month. Then September came, and I went to like, six games at Citi Field, went to Atlanta with my brother to see the Mets get drubbed one night and then get rained out, and I went to two playoff games at Citi Field. I ended up spending a lot of money I didn’t plan on spending. But it was worth it.”
Still, the Mets said their regular-season home attendance was down 244,000 from 2023, a decrease of more than 3,500 per game.
For 2025, though, it’s a whole new ballgame.
"It's a good time to be a Mets fan," said Audrey Lew, 32, of Brooklyn.
Robert Boland, a sports law professor at Seton Hall who also concentrates on gaming, hospitality and entertainment— and a self-styled “50-year Mets fan” — said: “It’s a tale of two seasons, really, when you get down to it. Last season was one of unexpected success. It turned out better than we thought. But it didn’t at the gate. There was excitement around the ball club, but it didn’t have the effect on the bottom line that you would like to have.
“Now there’s really genuine excitement and we’re having this debate about who owns New York again. The Soto signing has an enormous effect on the excitement of next season. Fans will be looking at multiple-game packages and other amenity upgrades. So the revenue doesn’t just fall in bodies through the turnstiles, but it does sort of drive people up the escalator of consumption and spending on the Mets, which is really what Citi Field is designed to take advantage of.”
Jake Bye, the Mets’ senior vice president of ticketing and premium, told Newsday: “We were amongst the league leaders in renewal percentage and in new season-ticket sales prior to signing Juan, and then when that happened everything just hit a completely new level . . . It really sets us up to have an electric environment all of next year, and that’s the goal. It’s been great.”
For those worrying the Mets are going to raise ticket prices after signing Soto, that’s not going to happen. Prices for 2025 were set at the end of last season.
For 2025, according to data provided by the Mets to Newsday, non-premium season-ticket buyers will see a decrease of 1.5%. Premium seat season-ticket buyers will see an increase of 4%. Some areas will see price decreases of up to 15%, and approximately half of the team’s tickets will remain flat in price or see a reduction in pricing.
That’s if you can get a ticket.
Over in the Bronx, the Yankees announced a total attendance of 3,309,838 in the 2024 regular season, an average of 41,897 per game, and sold out all seven of their postseason games. The Yankees were second in MLB to the Los Angeles Dodgers in average attendance and fourth in total attendance. The Yankees were up 2.5% from 2023 and don’t expect a decline in 2025 even without Soto.
Asked this week how 2025 ticket sales are going, a Yankees spokesman said, “Strong as always . . . We’re where we always are, which is a very strong offseason ticketing position for the next year.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
