Why was Mets' attendance down in 2024? Fans offer Steve Cohen a few reasons
A slow start last season and lowered expectations after a dismal 2023 contributed to a 9.5% decrease in attendance at Citi Field, which bothered owner Steve Cohen. Credit: Morgan Campbell
Mets regular-season attendance at Citi Field was down 9.5% last season. Owner Steve Cohen noticed.
“I didn’t like it. It really bothered me,” Cohen said on Tuesday. “People didn’t show up. I can’t speak for why that is.”
Mets fans can.
It seems like another lifetime now after the Mets unexpectedly made it to the NLCS last season and then signed Juan Soto to a record 15-year, $765-million contract.
But in 2024 the Mets had trouble selling tickets. They were down about 3,500 fans per game and ranked 18th in MLB.
Why?
Mostly, lowered expectations after the 2023 season, when the Mets temporarily pivoted away from Cohen’s free-spending ways. And a slow start to the 2024 season.
In 2023, the Mets — with the then-highest payroll in baseball history at approximately $375 million — went 75-87 and traded away some of their biggest stars such as Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander during the lost season for prospects.
As 2023 came to a close and 2024 opened, Mets executives indicated that fans should expect a competitive team, but perhaps not a World Series contender for a few years as the team transitioned to a younger, less expensive roster.
A slow start in 2024 — the Mets lost their first five games and went 9-19 in May — seemingly fulfilled fans’ forecasts of another down year.
Bill Pagan, a 54-year-old from Long Beach with a 20-game Saturday plan, feared the worst.
“They were 11 games under in June,” Pagan told Newsday on Wednesday when asked about Cohen’s comments. “There was a point in the middle of the year where I was, like, regretting buying a plan. I was like, ‘I’ve got to go to all these games. I’m looking at the secondary market at $15 tickets (being offered for sale) and mine are $50.’ But it all worked out because they made the playoffs.”
Longtime season-ticket holder and Woodmere native Evan Roberts — the 41-year-old co-host of WFAN’s “Evan and Tiki” show who lives in Westchester — told Newsday late last season: “They have as bad a season (in 2023) as humanly possible in which they’re trading guys off. Then they have an offseason in which they don’t do anything that excites people. So who are they selling tickets to from ’23 into ’24? They’re not. They’re only getting people like me who are (idiots). We’re going to renew no matter what. The on-the-fence people were gone. What would make them actually stay?”
What made the fans come back in droves for the final regular-season series against the Phillies and the playoffs was something simple.
Winning.
“The beginning of the year, the team was horrible,” said Keith Blacknick, 48, of Woodside, Queens. “They were going into the season saying — not really saying but implying — that it was going to be a punt year, that money was going to come off the books, that they were going to go after Soto and some free agents in the next year.”
“(Then) it just started clicking. The whole thing with Grimace. People started rallying behind him and rallying behind ‘OMG’ and it just started having a little bit of a feel of a fun team and made people want to come. If you put out a good product and you put out fun, people are going to come.”
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.
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