Thrilling playoff push sees Mets get big attendance boost in final weeks

It finally happened in the eighth inning in Queens on Wednesday: As Francisco Lindor stepped to the plate, a baseball crowd morphed into a karaoke party.

Lindor, hearing the sing-along that had broken out for his walk-up song, “My Girl,” sensed the energy and used his timeout before the at-bat began.

With the brief break in action, the nearly 26,270 in attendance belted out the lyrics in unison, a fun moment on a fun night for Mets fans who watched the team’s seventh straight win.

After a slow start in attempting to fill the park and amid an overall attendance dip for this season, the crowds at Citi Field have picked up during a stretch of solid play and plenty of endearing oddities (such as “OMG” and Grimace).

Those have created entertaining narratives and, the organization hopes, an improved experience for fans.

Beginning Friday against the Reds, the Mets will have 10 more regular-season games in Flushing in the middle of a playoff chase.

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They are expecting the crowd’s roar — and its crooning — to grow louder.

“We expect to approach the high [30,000s], potential sellouts, especially those last two games against the Phillies [two weekends from now],” Jake Bye, the Mets’ senior VP of ticketing, said over the phone Thursday. “… We have some pretty sophisticated predictive models, and all signs point to having larger crowds than we’ve had in probably decades for these September series, which is really exciting.”

The recent turnouts have been promising for the club.

The three-game sweep of the Red Sox drew an announced total of 90,734, which Bye said was just the second time the Mets have averaged at least 30,000 per game in a weekday September series since the ballpark opened in 2009.

There were plenty of contributing factors to that total, including Boston fans showing up and an especially large Labor Day gathering, but the Mets hope the excitement that is being displayed on the field will be mirrored by the sizes of the season-ending crowds — which would be a departure from earlier this year.

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Overall, the Mets’ 2024 attendance has been down by about 3,500 per game, from an average of 31,772 last season to 28,116 this season, dropping their overall attendance rank from eighth to 10th in the National League.

Citi Field was far emptier earlier this year, bringing in an average of 24,071 through the first 24 games of the season. Maybe it was the colder-than-usual April weather.

Maybe it was the plunge in expectations after a more modest offseason than the previous one.

Bye pointed to the four home rainouts before June began.

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“We definitely struggled early,” said Bye, who added that every team faces a battle in filling seats in chillier months, during which school is in session. “When we started the season, it was an uphill climb. We did that, and we leaned into that with all of this creativity. And then, fortunately, the viral stuff happened organically, we jumped on that. And we have an owner that lets us be creative and … make sure people have a world-class time and experience when they’re here.”

The creativity in attracting customers has come in many forms. The $5 Tuesdays promotion, with low prices of many concessions, “have been a huge hit,” Bye said. The marketing team has attempted to capitalize with ad campaigns for a team that has been as meme-able as any, from Seymour Weiner to McDonald’s mascots to Jose Iglesias songs. The Queens Crew is new this year in hopes of supplying some entertainment away from the field.

The Mets did not share specific data, but Bye pointed to “a ton” of first-time buyers as reason for hope that the organization is attracting more and different people to the park.

“We want to make the experience not reliant upon good baseball,” Bye said. “We’re playing great baseball right now, which is fantastic. But we believe people can come here, have a fantastic experience, have a great time, afford it. And that becomes sort of the icing for the team.”

With 10 home games left for a team battling the Braves, Diamondbacks and Padres for a playoff spot, the team is firmly the main course.

“We got to continue to put on a good show for them,” Lindor said this week.

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