2025 Game Times

[Gwreck]

Mets announced start times for 2025 home games:

Notable:
Home opener is Friday, April 4 with a 3:10 start
Sunday May 25 vs Dodgers is a 7:10 ESPN game.
Memorial Day, May 26, is a 4:10 start vs. White Sox.
Friday, July 4 is a 3:10 PM start vs Yankees.
Sunday, August 17 is a “home game” in Williamsport, PA against the Mariners. 7:10 start.

All Saturday games start at 4:10 except:
-Saturday April 5 vs. Toronto. 7:10 start (because home opener is a Friday)
-Saturday May 10 vs Cubs. 7:15 start.
-Saturday May 24 vs Dodgers. 7:15 start.

Everything else is the standard 7:10 weeknight/1:40 Sunday/1:10 mid-week getaway day schedule.

Of course, another game or two on Sunday could be changed to a night game per usual practice.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Presale individual tickets went on sale this morning. Use Mets.com/presale and Mets25 discount code.

Got a whole season of Tuesday Night games (12 games excluding the April 8 game which will be freezing) in the second row of 514 (directly behind home plate) for $683 or $341.50 per ass. Highest price for any game was $26 to see the Phillies.

That sounds like a bargain does it not?

[Gwreck]

That’s well done. Mets have really leaned into ticket scaling for weekend games but weeknights remain a good value.

As an example: the same seat for the Tuesday June 10 game against Washington is 55% more expensive for the Saturday June 14 game against Tampa.

[Fman99]

Presale individual tickets went on sale this morning. Use Mets.com/presale and Mets25 discount code.

Got a whole season of Tuesday Night games (12 games excluding the April 8 game which will be freezing) in the second row of 514 (directly behind home plate) for $683 or $341.50 per ass. Highest price for any game was $26 to see the Phillies.

That sounds like a bargain does it not?

I think so. If I lived within mass transit distance of the ballpark I'd likely do something like this as well.

[bmfc1]

ESPN announced some of the Sundays they will screw up. At least we don't have to worry about this until May:
https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-rele ... -unveiled/

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, nothing until May, but then two in a row and three weeks out of six

May 18 @ Yanx
May 25 hosting LAD
June 22 @ Phils
-----
Then 'hosting' the Mariners in Williamsburg PA on August 17



Second half of the year has not yet been set, but there are sure to be some and even more (and with less advanced notice) if the team is doing well.

[DocTee]

I went to one (two?) noon starts this year and really really liked it. Wish they had some of those in 25.

[kcmets]

Then 'hosting' the Mariners in Williamsburg PA on August 17

This might be fun, but I imagine it's a hot ticket...
https://www.mlb.com/events/little-league-classic

[bmfc1]

I went to one (two?) noon starts this year and really really liked it. Wish they had some of those in 25.

They still might as the ROKU games haven't been announced.

[bmfc1]

Here are the start times for every team:
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2025-game-times-released

[Gwreck]

Second half of the year has not yet been set, but there are sure to be some and even more (and with less advanced notice) if the team is doing well.

There is annual limit of 5 appearances per team in the Sunday night slot.

[Frayed Knot]

Some stuff on game times in general: basically that MLB games are starting earlier, ending earlier, and are shorter in duration.

- so where the 7PM was long the norm, 2024 saw 41.7% of weekday games start prior to 7PM. In 2025 that'll be up to 62.8%

- time of games: 2021 = 3:10; 2022 = 3:04; 2023 (first year of new rules) = 2:40; 2024 = 2:36

- 2021 weekday games ending prior to 10PM = 44.7%; 2024 weekday games ending prior to 10PM = 87.8%

- 2021 ending prior to 9:30PM = 24%; 2024 games ending prior to 9:30PM = 59.1%


And in what may or may not be a related statistic, MLB attendance in 2024 was the highest in seven years

[Gwreck]

There’s not much evidence to suggest any long-term attendance trends are linked to start times. Game length? Maybe, although attendance was fairly steady through the 2000s and 2010s as the average game length went up.

Overall, attendance since 1998 hasn’t changed all too much (70.6 M in 1998; 71.3M in 2024). Attendance did drop off from 72.6M in 2017 to 68.5 in 2019, and 2023 it was back to 70.7

This is not to say the pitch clock and faster games aren’t good (they are) but it’s much harder to say the start times matter much.

Separately, and since I was curious, teams that use 7:05/7:10/7:15 start times on weekdays:

Teams with year-round 7:05/7:07/7:10/7:15 (local) weekday start times:
Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, New York (both), Sacramento, Tampa, Texas, Toronto

A bunch of teams (Baltimore, Detroit, Miami, Milwaukee, Kansas City, San Francisco, Seattle) have post-7 start times on Fridays, and earlier Mon-Thu.

Boston, Cincinnati, and the Cubs do post-7 start times in the summer and earlier in April/May/September.

[Frayed Knot]

There’s not much evidence to suggest any long-term attendance trends are linked to start times. Game length? Maybe, although attendance was fairly steady through the 2000s and 2010s as the average game length went up.

My main suggestion was to possibly tie attendance to length of games. But it's certainly possible that earlier start times, when combined with snappier games and the increased likelihood that games will be over by or before 9:30, is A factor in the recent uptick in the turnstiles.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The puzzling thing is the Mets don't draw.

[Frayed Knot]

Yup! 11th of 15 in the NL last year.
The 0-5 start and the disaster that was the month of May certainly didn't get things off to a good start.
But you'd think a 49-32 2nd half with all the nail biters down the stretch would have helped make up more ground.

[Fman99]

Yup! 11th of 15 in the NL last year.
The 0-5 start and the disaster that was the month of May certainly didn't get things off to a good start.
But you'd think a 49-32 2nd half with all the nail biters down the stretch would have helped make up more ground.

It's stupid expensive there. Twenty five dollars to park your car and $18 beers. A good team doesn't make a family experience there any cheaper.

[Gwreck]

Attendance is typically correlated to the prior year’s performance and less to the current year. Mets drew better in 2006 than 2007; better in 2016 than 2015; better in 2023 than 2022.