As we approach the end of the calendar year, it means a lot of different things depending on which sports you follow. NFL fans are keeping an eye on playoff predictions while MLS fans lucky enough to see their favorite team reach the conference finals are telling themselves, “This is the year,” and NBA fans are beginning to see how their team stacks up against the competition to begin a new season.
This time of year also means that another MLB season has ended – a sad time for those of us who thoroughly enjoy America’s favorite pastime and all that comes with it. However, this is the nature of sports, with the change of seasons being the only thing guaranteed in an otherwise unpredictable world of week-to-week storylines.
As the 2023 season has officially come to a close, we’re taking a moment to look back at how things went with our first MLB team customer and one of our strongest innovation partners – the New York Mets.
There’s a famous saying, “If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere,” which implies that New York is one of the most challenging cities in the world to impress and find success. Beginning in the Fall of 2021, that’s exactly what Wicket set out to do.
The Mets were kind enough to host members of our team to experience one of the final games of the 2023 season and to capture some of the great things that we’ve done together – and look to do in the future.
A video from that day can be viewed here, where you’ll see Mets Entry Express in action and can listen to what both of our organizations think about our work together and what’s in store for next season. VP of Technology Solutions for the New York Mets, Oscar Fernandez, captures it best when he said this about Wicket’s solution and our collaborative partnership:
If you stick around for the whole video, you’ll hear our CTO, Rob Seaner, at the very end proclaim, “We’re all in!” This has quickly become sort of a mantra (and meme) within our company that perfectly captures the mindset that Wicket has as we push ourselves to keep up with the vision and ambition of our customers.
Another thing we walked away with that day at Citi Field was seeing fans use Mets Entry Express and hearing some of the things they had to say about it. To hear firsthand about the positive experiences of fans never gets old, and we use that as fuel to keep building new solutions and use cases for this unique technology.
We weren’t completely surprised at the positive response, however, as we knew that 90% of fans who used Entry Express wanted to see it used elsewhere at Citi Field, according to a 2022 fan survey. This is a common theme at all of the teams Wicket has deployed solutions to in the MLB, NFL, MLS, and most recently, NBA – once fans use it once, they tend to keep using it.
We’re excited about what’s in store for 2024 with the Mets as we look to expand use cases and improve upon our existing experiences based on insights learned.
A big thank you to the Mets for hosting Wicket and for allowing us to experience firsthand the glory of Citi Field and all that goes with it. #LGM!
