Steve Cohen 'really bothered' by Mets' attendance numbers in 2024

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Among the ways Steve Cohen badly wants the Mets to improve in 2025: fans showing up.

The Mets ranked 18th in the majors in attendance last season with an average of 28,757 people per game. That was worse than the Brewers and Diamondbacks and just ahead of the Orioles and Guardians.

“I didn’t like it. It really bothered me,” Cohen, entering his fifth season as the Mets’ owner, said Tuesday. “People didn’t show up. I can’t speak for why that is . . . There’s always been a little bit of skepticism with the Mets and believing that we’re going to be sustainable winners, sustainably in the playoffs.”

He pointed specifically to a mid-September, mid-week series against the Nationals, the last homestand of the year, while the Mets were in the thick of a playoff push. Officially, the Mets drew 21,694 for the series opener. Cohen indicated it was even less than that.

“There were 18,000 fans in the stadium during a late pennant race,” he said.

During an on-field interview following the series sweep of the Nationals, Brandon Nimmo pleaded with fans to show up at Citi Field for a big four-game series against the NL East rival Phillies.

“This place needs to be rocking on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday," Nimmo said. "We need your help. We need everybody to get out here. We need this place full. This is playoff baseball. This is what you guys want."

Cohen said he didn’t know why more fans didn’t show up all year but noted that attendance tends to trail performance. In reality, it didn’t help that the Mets were terrible for the first third of the season and even in September were merely trying to win a wild-card spot in the expanded playoff field — not exactly the race for the division of generations past.

Still, the Mets have seen “a significant percentage increase” in ticket sales for this season.

“I’m really hopeful this year,” Cohen said. “I’m really looking forward to this year being a year when fans come out. I think the fans are having a great time. When I look out at the stadium, I think it’s a great game presentation, we have a great team I think. I think it’s going to be a fun place to be this year.

“And frankly, you want a full stadium, because you want a lot of noise there and you want opposing teams to really feel it when they’re playing us. It’s important that the fans come out and support the team.”

By Tim Healey

timothy.healey@newsday.com@timbhealey

Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.