Fans Fires Back! Mets Supporters Unleash Fury on Steve Cohen Over Attendance Comments
New York Mets owner Steve Cohen generated headlines earlier when he somewhat controversially complained about the fact that his team finished the 2024 regular season ranked 17th in MLB in average home attendance.
Mets fan and 20-game ticket holder Bill Pagan spoke with Newsday’s Anthony Rieber about Cohen’s comments.
“They were 11 games under (.500) in June,” Pagan said about the 2024 Mets. “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.”
Long before the Mets completed a trip to last year’s National League Championship Series, they began the campaign with five straight losses. New York was 22-33 when shortstop Francisco Lindor called a players-only meeting, and the Mets later ended June 2 at 24-35. At that time, many paying customers assumed the club was headed toward a “fire sale” of talent for the second consecutive summer.
Per Ryan Chichester of Audacy, WFAN radio host and longtime Mets season-ticket holder Evan Roberts said on Tuesday he felt Cohen was “threatening Met fans” and saying that it was “time for you to do your part” after Cohen signed All-Star outfielder Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765M contract that could reportedly exceed $800M this offseason.
“They have as bad a season (in 2023) as humanly possible in which they’re trading guys off,” Roberts told Newsday about the Mets’ attendance in 2024. “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?”
Heading into a pivotal September series versus the rival Philadelphia Phillies, outfielder Brandon Nimmo directly told Mets fans that the players needed “everybody to get out here” and wanted “this place full.” The Amazins subsequently drew the largest non-Subway Series crowd on back-to-back games in the history of regular-season play at Citi Field.
“The beginning of the year, the team was horrible,” Mets fan Keith Blacknick added about how many people flocked to Queens to watch the club play last spring. “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.”
Fans can’t make similar comments this winter. As of Thursday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook had the Mets tied for fourth among the betting favorites at +1200 odds to win the 2025 World Series. Such expectations, along with the Mets landing Soto and re-signing fan-favorite Pete Alonso, should result in bigger crowds at Citi Field throughout the spring.
