The Data Behind Diehard Fans: Mets Insights Unpacked

What does it take to turn millions of fan interactions into meaningful insight? In this episode, host Karen Lynch sits down with Craig Swaisgood, VP of Data, Analytics & Business Intelligence for the New York Mets, to explore the intersection of data, fandom, and experience design.

Craig shares how his team blends behavioral data, survey insights, and segmentation to understand what truly drives fan engagement—while navigating the emotional highs and lows that define sports fandom. From lagging indicators like ticket sales to real-time fan feedback at Citi Field, this conversation reveals how data informs decisions across marketing, operations, and strategy.

It’s a compelling look at how insights professionals can balance logic and emotion to create experiences that resonate—whether you're in sports or any customer-centric industry.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Emotional Complexity of Fandom Why sports fans defy traditional logic—and how data teams account for emotional volatility in insights
• From Data to Experience Design How the Mets use behavioral, demographic, and psychographic data to shape fan experiences
• Segmentation That Goes Beyond Demographics Building personas based on motivations, behaviors, and life context—not just who fans are, but why they engage
• Lagging Indicators & the Long Game Why ticket sales and sentiment don’t shift instantly—and what that means for interpreting performance
• The Say-Do Gap in Action Fans may complain—but their behavior tells a different story (and data reveals the truth)

Resources & Links:

• New York Mets Official Website
• Citi Field Information
• MLB Fan Experience Insights

You can reach out to Craig Swaisgood on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Craig Swaisgood for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I’m Karen Lynch, happy to be hosting today’s episode. And actually, happy is an understatement. I’ve probably never been more excited to host an episode in my entire career here at Greenbook. My family knew to clear the decks. My household knew to stay quiet because today I have the honor of interviewing somebody from my favorite organization. Craig Swaisgood is a VP Data and Analytics and Business Intelligence at the New York Mets. So, this is a great time to say, if you know, you know. I’ll get more into that in a minute. But Craig supports decision-making across all business strategy, fan engagement, engagement, revenue-related functions. No player data and analytics. So, for those of you who are, kind of, in the Mets fandom, we’re not going there. We’re not going to ask, even though we really want to. We’re not going to ask. He’s not in charge of player data, player analytics. It’s not that. He’s in charge of all the other data. And he comes to the Mets organization with a background that spans, you know, finance, education, professional sports. He’s been in Washington at JP Morgan, he’s been with the Houston Astros, he’s also an adjunct professor at Columbia University. So, I’m going to take a deep breath and just welcome you, Craig, to the Greenbook Podcast.

Craig: Thanks. Excited to be here.

Karen: I’m so glad, and your excitement will not match mine. I’m so sorry. The pressure is on there, but I just want to set some context for everybody listening, too. So, this episode, you know, it’s launching in April, but we’ve already had opening day in the MLB. So, the Mets have had their first few games after a fairly interesting offseason. If you’re a Mets fan, you know what I’m talking about. And this one is personal for me because I am a Mets fan. And one of the things Craig and I are going to talk about is the emotionality of fandom and how to stay objective looking at data and analytics, when you have such an emotional fan base, including some of the people that work for the Mets organization. Like, it’s a really interesting role, and I’m really excited to unpack it, Craig. But first, let’s just talk about you for a little bit. Tell people about, you know, yourself and your journey leading up to the Mets.

Craig: Sure. So yeah, you mentioned a lot of, kind of what my resume would say as well. You know, I started off in the public sector. I got my Master’s in Public Policy and Public Administration from New York University. So, kind of, first arrived in New York many years ago. I won’t give you the exact date, so I don’t really date myself. But worked in the public sector for a long period of time. Wanted to kind of affect change at a pretty large scale. Stayed in DC for about nine years after I got my master’s. Met my wife there, things fundamentally changed in DC around 2016, 2017 for my specific role, and my wife and I looked around and we’re like, “Do we want to stay in DC? What does this look like? How do we want to think about our future?” And we weren’t—we love DC, but we weren’t married to the city, and so I applied to the Houston Astros, got a job there, was fortunate to kind of see some success on the field, off the field. And then Covid hit. We got back to the East Coast, and the opportunity at the Mets presented itself. There’s a lot of the stuff that I’ve kind of been building foundational competencies with over the course of my career. Jumped at it, have loved every minute of it. And like you said, the season just started, so this is what we’re here for.

Karen: And we are recording on an off day, right? So, the team you know, just had three home games. That is Citi Field behind him. So, best stadium in the country, I would think, to work at. So, if you haven’t been, you need to get there. It’s really—and great food. I mean, come on, Citi Field. There’s nothing like it.

Craig: Best ballpark food four years running. We just got the fourth year in a row.

Karen: It’s so great. Actually, it’s really funny. My father is not really well enough to come to games with us right now, but for a while, there we were going regularly, my father and I, and it was always like, let’s get a lobster roll. And, you know, I remember my husband the first time saying, “Wait, you get lobster rolls at Citi fields?” And I’m like, “Oh, sweetheart.” [laugh]. I was like, “Yes, yes, we do.” So Craig, let me ask you this. I think that, you know, lots of our listeners are in data and analytics, but yours is a very unique, you know, a unique world that you operate in. So, what does the VP Data and Analytics do for, you know, an organization like the Mets that is, you know, kind of, touching all sorts of the data points that I mentioned earlier. But a day in the life, what are you doing?

Craig: Yeah. So, like you said, everything non-player and team performance-related, which means that we have tens of millions of people who have touched the Mets in some way, right? A million-plus of them we have records on coming through Citi Field, and that’s just who we have records on, right? You scan four tickets; we have one person if you scanned all four. And so, we’ve got millions of data points, or ten billion data points, millions of different records over the course of multiple decades. And so, we think about it in terms of ticket sales, and you bought a ticket for $100 but we don’t know your motivations. And so, my team kind of looks at all the data that we do have in the data warehouse, and then we combine it with psychographic and demographic information that we have through survey data or third-party data or anything that people have handed over through sweepstakes. And then obviously a huge digital connection. So, we have mets.com and a lot of different resources that allow us to kind of aggregate data and then hopefully connect it to the specific user, if they’re logged in. So, lot of different things, but we do kind of market research, strong data analytics, data science, and then we kind of connect it with the strategy team to make sure that each one of the departments is thinking through, in a data-informed way, how to best provide, you know, a better experience, whether it’s at Citi Field, whether it’s online, you know, how do we get them out here more? How do we turn people into, kind of, lifelong fans, like you and your family? How do we turn them into season ticket members if they have the resources and proximity to the stadium? So, it’s all of those things, but it’s really, how do we make people kind of love the Mets, obviously, in good times, but even in hard times, and so on. That’s the goal.

Karen: [laugh]. Well, that’s part of—again, sidebar for the audience—this is one of those, I feel like, if you know, you know, being a Mets fan is an emotional roller coaster. I think I said on the pre-call, one of the things my mother taught me a long time ago in the New York area where people tend to choose, are you a Mets fan or a Yankees fan, my mother said, “Anybody can be a Yankees fan. That’s easy. But it takes character to be a Mets fan.” And I liked that. That resonated with me, right? I was like, all right, I have character. I can do that [laugh]. So, talk to me a little bit about that emotionality and how you, kind of, look at data when you know there’s also this emotional feedback you may be getting, some might say irrational and it’s just highly… temperamental. Is that the right word? It’s fluid. It changes by the day. Talk to me about how you do what you do when it’s heated, like that.

Craig: Now, fans are never irrational. That’s just never something that we’ve ever seen.

Karen: [laugh]. So irrational. 

Craig: No but I mean, so I think fans in general are very connected to their team, right? This is something that many of them started becoming a fan when they were four or five, six years old. Mom and Dad took them to the game, they went with siblings, they went friends, cousins, et cetera. So, they do have this deep connection. The Mets are kind of next level in some instances because especially, I mean, you just—of course, we’ve got a history, but even just our recent history of last four years, we’re in 2022, we won more than 100 games, everybody thought that we were the greatest team on earth. 2023 we went out and made some big signings. We didn’t make the playoffs, and so then they thought we’re the worst team on earth. 2024, Max Scherzer said that we were going to have this bridge year, it wasn’t going to be something that Steve Cohen wanted to kind of compete with, which is just not true. We make it to the CS, then we signed Juan Soto; everybody thinks we’re going to win the World Series. Might as well start playing the parade. We don’t make the playoffs. So, Mets fans in particular, have had a little bit of a Jekyll and Hyde experience over the last few years. Some might argue more than that, but definitely the last four we can point to. And so, it is difficult, right? When you’re thinking about market research and you’re thinking about benchmarks and emotional state, when people are saying things about your team, it becomes a lot harder to, kind of, set that baseline. And so, one of the things that we just kind of know to be true is that if your team wins the World Series, everybody thinks the beer is cold, the hot dogs are warm. And then your team crashes and burns. The beer is warm and the hot dogs are cold, right? So, there is that, kind of, how do you set a baseline? How do you understand trends over time, and how do you think about that within the context of emotion? And you can never get rid of it completely. So, the goal that we have is just, you know, whether it’s through large sample size, whether it’s through kind of conjoints or different ways of thinking about how we’re going out to our fans and learning, who are you coming with? Why are you coming with? Why are you so deeply committed to the Mets? It’s a lot of just using data points when we get them, and understanding that some things are based on emotion and some things actually have statistical significance and so it’s our job to kind of draw the distinction between those things.

Karen: And filter that out. And one of the things you had said to me, though, was also, you know, even some of your employees are those types of passionate fans, right? So, how do you maintain that objectivity, when your very work can cause, like, this emotional, visceral reaction?

Craig: Our owner is a fan, right?

Karen: Yeah, seriously.

Craig: Like, he grew up a Mets fan. Like, he’s not just somebody who bought a team. So, yeah, I mean, it is one of those things. I remember, I was having a lot of conversations in the offseason last year when everybody was like, we’re going after Juan Soto. Like, there’s no secret to that. Everybody knew we wanted Juan Soto. And so, we talked a lot about it. Well, if we sign Juan Soto, what does this mean? How do we think about the team? Is there a bobblehead? Is there a jersey giveaway, right? And so, one of the things that I constantly reminded people is that our fans aren’t monoliths, right? Many of them, the core, hardcore folks, know that we’re going after Juan Soto. They’re going to love it if we get them, and they’re going to be super disappointed if we don’t get them. However, we also have a lot of casual fans who come with a die-hard potential, potentially, and they don’t know who Juan Soto is. And that’s crazy for a baseball fan to think of, but like, inside these walls, we know everything, right? When Alonso left, we knew it, and we knew what the conversation was going to be. When Diaz left, I think it caught a few of us by surprise, but we knew some of the reaction to that. When we get Bo Bichette, we know what that means for our lineup. But most of our fans don’t, right? They’re going there for a good time, for a good experience again, perhaps because they’re dragged there by some fanatic who has loved the Mets forever and is trying to share his or her love with the rest of the family. So, it’s an important reminder that we are not a monolith, everybody understands the team in different ways, and when we have a conversation in a conference room here, even our die hard fans who are employees, need to kind of put that fan hat on and not just think through the lens of, of course everybody can name our 40-man roster. Why wouldn’t you be able to do that? And it’s like because people don’t get paid to, like, talk about the Mets all day. Some people still can name that 40-man roster, but it is not universally well known, every single thing that we’re doing and every communication that we have is sticking. And so, we just have to be intentional about reminding ourselves that the knowledge we have and us literally spending all day thinking about the Mets is not the knowledge our fans have.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I’m still thinking about how to get paid by talking about the Mets all day. How do I get that job? No, I’m only kidding. I’m perfectly happy where I am. I’m just, you know, being a Mets fan. It’s just a fun thing to think about. And I love that explanation, too, because I do think you have a lot of inside perspective that, you know, can’t necessarily get brought out there into the real world, to viewers who don’t know. I do have one—my bonus son, for example, who I talk about quite a bit on the show, he was not raised in my household, and actually, right now, he lives in Philly, and I’ve given him the marching orders that he cannot be a Philly fan. It’s, like, unacceptable. And he’s cool with that. He’s on board to be a Mets fan, and now he has some Mets clothes. And he still hasn’t come with me to Citi Field, which is crazy, but this might be his year. Anyway, so we have some rules there, but he doesn’t know everything, right? So, it’s just not his sport. He’s been a soccer fan his whole life, right? But what I’m curious about, or want to talk about next—because I’m curious about all of it—but you know, when we talk about fandom and identity, you and I had talked a little bit about segmentation and how you think about the personas of your Mets fans, and I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation—that was in our pre-call, friends—I think a lot about that because I think there’s some lessons in just persona work that can be applied to other categories as well. So first, can you level set and just tell people what you can about some of the Mets personas that you’re able to share? Only what you’re able to share. But it was an interesting conversation.

Craig: Sure. So, we worked with a company called Navigate, which incredible group, and they’ve done this type of work for a lot of just different organizations. But it was important for us to partner with somebody who really understood sports, right, segmentation and personas, those types of things. Sure, they play for every business, probably, but it’s just a little bit different for some of the questions you’ve already asked around, kind of, the asked around, kind of the emotional state of fandom. And so, they were great to work with. But what we did is we looked at our full database, and we said, “All right, who do we have? Who do we think are real Mets fans?” Because we have data. You know, you could watch a Mets and a Dodgers game, and maybe we have information on that, but maybe you’re also a Dodger season ticket holder. So, it’s like, you’re not really a Mets fan; you just kind of had an interaction with the Mets brand. And so we, kind of, cut it up in a bunch of different ways. And at the end of the day, you know, for simplicity, we used an RFM model, Recency, Frequency, and Monetary. How much money are you spending, how recent, and how frequent do you do this, right? And so, we started to cluster different groups based on that. And obviously those are just behavioral pieces of data, but then we did some custom research where we dropped on top of that: why did you do that, right? Like, who do you share your experience with? What else do you like to do? And so, just really trying to understand not just what they did in our data warehouse, but. Why they did it, and who they are, what sector they worked in. And part of this is because, you know, we recognize that even with the large amounts of data that we have, we have blind spots, and we will always have blind spots, but if we can use personas, especially as a proxy, to thinking about our fans and, kind of, what motivates Karen and her family specifically, then it can make us better when we’re trying to create a good family experience. And then when we think about somebody who’s coming because it’s a work outing and they want to network, or they want to entertain clients, or something like that, why do they do it and what’s the big thing they’re aiming to get out of this? And if that’s true, then are we doing that for other people who might have similar aims? So, I’m not going to get into the specifics. You know, we have 18 different segments. We have five different personas. We think about them in a bunch of different unique ways, but it was important for us to understand our data warehouse and all of our fans as much as we could so that we could try to personalize some of the experiences, recognizing that you know who they are in 2022 might be different than who they are in 2026, right? Their family situation could have changed, they could have moved, they could have a different job. There’s so many different variables, and so we don’t do this so that we can get literal to every single individual fan; we do this so that we understand the different groupings of our fans, and then just try to do as many things to make the experience as good for as many different types of people as we can.

Karen: Yeah, that’s really cool because, you know, I think that, um—anyway, I think that’s really cool to think about, again, as we think about other types of brands and other types of categories, I don’t know that they’re using segmentation quite the same way, so I’m sure that there’s some learning in the nuance there. So, thank you for sharing that. One of the other things we talked about, again on our pre-call, is that you had said, you know, ticket sales and, kind of, fan enthusiasm, and even season ticket sales, some of those things that you know can be lagging indicators, and I wanted to unpack that here so I understood it a little bit more, first of all, but also so that we can learn from that. So, tell us what you meant by that, if you can recall that part of our conversation.

Craig: Sure, yeah. I mean so, because the season is 162 games, people can over or underreact to different things. So, good example is, you know, if you thought somebody played well this first weekend—and I think MLB and The Athletic both put something out that was like ‘overreactions from the first weekend.’ And one of the things said, like, ‘the Dodgers are going to go 162 and 0.’ And it’s like, everybody knows that’s not going to happen, right, but we overreact with small sample sizes.

Karen: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: And so, that, to me, is interesting because I think it takes a while for people to be convinced of something that maybe they already believed and then came out to find that it was different, especially when you’re dealing almost entirely with emotions, which fandom is. And so, a good example of that is, you know, in 2024 when we overperformed expectations, it took our fans a long time to kind of convince themselves that we were actually good. And in their defense, we weren’t good for the first couple of months, right? We kind of performed in relative to how they thought we were going to perform. And then by June 1, kind of, by Memorial Day, we start playing better. Well, took them a long time to think that we were actually a good team. And then once they did, that ball was rolling really, really well and, like, people like, okay, we’re here for the postseason. But ticket sales didn’t pick up, fan emotional state didn’t pick up right away, right, when we started winning some games. It took some time. And so, yeah, it’s kind of a lagging indicator. Same thing is true if the Dodgers lose ten games in a row right now, their fans are going to be pretty convinced that they’re still a good team, right? It’s going to take a lot for their fans to turn on them because they’ve got a recent track record of just being a very successful organization. And so, that’s what I’m talking about. When we’re talking about the emotional state of our fans, it’s like, once they start to get it in their mind that you’re good, you have to do a lot to disprove that. And now sometimes teams do a lot to disprove that they’re good, but the reverse happens also, right? So, if we think we’re a good team, even if we go on a three-game losing streak, fans are going to be like, “That’s a slump. We’re going to be okay.” As opposed to, if you think that you’re a bad team and you go on a three-game losing streak, it’s more of a, “Oh, here we go again,” narrative. And so, that’s what I mean by lagging indicators. Like, just because you win a few games doesn’t mean your ticket sales jump up, and just because you lose a few games doesn’t mean that you’re never going to sell a ticket again. But as that starts to kind of become more than just a shot in the pan, it starts to really affect business outcomes.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah, what is it you said to me so kindly? Like, just realize that, you know, the World Series is not being decided this weekend [laugh]. So, it was like, settle down, Karen. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, we’re oh and five two years ago, and we made it to the CS, game six of the CS. And so, when we were oh and five, everybody thought that it was going to be a bad year. And it was not a bad year. It was a great year.

Karen: Yeah.

Craig: So, yeah, same thing. We went two and one this first weekend. But if we went oh and three or three and oh, like, we still can make the playoffs regardless of what that record is. So, there’s a reason baseball so special in the 162 games.

Karen: Yeah. Well, I can say, having watched this weekend, all of the games watched, not attended live, I had it had me thinking about something. So, during the offseason, which I had shared with you, I was one of those fans that I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to show up for this team. I don’t know if I’m going to go, you know, trying to think, last year my mom and I had gone on Mother’s Day, and I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to go on Mother’s Day again. It was, like, my first year kind of as a full, empty nester and I’m like, “I’ll go with my mom. My kids won’t come.” And anyway, so during the off season, I was like, “Oh, I don’t know.” And then, of course this weekend comes, and I’m all in, right? And I’m like, I’m, you know, starting to, like, talk to my mom. I’m like, “Hey, Mom, should we do this?” And then my son, he’s watching the game with me, he’s 24 and he’s like, “When are we going?” Like, we just—all of that smack talk just disappeared. And it had me thinking about something we talk about in research all the time, which is that, say-do gap right where your actual behaviors are just different from what you say, but kind of the reverse of it on some level, like, we talked a big game about being irritated, and I know there were other fans who did the same thing because I saw them on social media. So, how do you deal with that, also, kind of the signs that people’s actual behavior might be different from what they’re saying that’s very different from the emotional conversation we’ve had. Now, we have a say-do gap. I don’t know if you can speak to that. It wasn’t my plan, but here I am.

Craig: Yeah, I mean, it does happen. And I think one of the things we talked about is that being a fan sometimes means that it’s a family, and I know that sometimes that can be an overplayed term, but it’s one of those things where it’s like, Mets fans can talk bad about the Mets, to each other, but as soon as a Phillies fan talks bad about the Mets, like, it’s on. Those are fighting words. And so, yes, I think that’s part of it. And we recognize that emotional state, which is why I’m in a very fortunate position where I am to have the kind of behavioral data and kind of the survey data or the qualitative data, and say, is Karen being honest with us, right? She’s going to say that she’s never going to come to any game, but she comes to eight games a year, and it would be shocking if she didn’t. And I think the best example of that is season ticket members. If you’ve been a 20-year season ticket member, you’re probably going to be the most angry when we crash and burn, but you’re also probably going to be a 21st year season ticket member, too, right? Like, you’re not going to break it just because you had, you know, a down season because we’ve had plenty of those in the last 20 years. So, that’s what I would say, is like, we have all of this data that indicates your true behavior, and then we have data that kind of indicates what you’re saying. One of the things that obviously, you know, fans don’t necessarily love is, like, when you ask people, like, hey, what would get you to come out to Citi Field more, they always say cheaper ticket prices. And we’re like, yeah, of course, right? Like, who doesn’t want something for cheaper? But there are certain games that you can get in for $10, $15 and we’re not seeing people kind of run towards the gates on those days, right? And so, I think that there’s some of those things where it’s like, you kind of have to take everything with a grain of salt. Like, this is a world, increasingly, where we’re not doing things in real life, but sports is the outlier, right? It’s the one time where you still have to—yeah, you can watch it at home, and we all do, but that real life experience at Citi Field, as you mentioned earlier, you can’t replace that, and that’s a beautiful thing. And we could probably stand to be around other humans a little more frequently than we currently are, for all of their faults. Like, humanity and connection, that’s important, and sports it brings that together. So, I think I got a little bit off track towards the end, but like, that’s the general thought is, like, people are emotional, and when they’re emotional, they’re not always the most logical.

Karen: They’re not logical. Well, I have to say, the other thing that hit the news in the last few weeks is this new ferry from Stanford, Connecticut—I live up in Connecticut—this new ferry from Stanford down to Citi Field, and I had seen the ferry dock, you know, when I’ve been stuck in, kind of, traffic on the way to Citi Field before, and you know, you’re parked down there, when you see the marina, and I’m like, what are those ferry boats? Where are they coming from? And then assumes they were Staten Island or wherever. But now there’s a ferry from Connecticut. Two of my friends, two friends who are not Mets fans, texted me and said, “Hey, I might be able to get in on this.” And it was really funny to think about transportation being a part of the experience. So anyway, so I don’t know if you’re also looking at transportation data and how people arrive at the games. Does that also fall under your purview? That’s complicated.

Craig: It does so, I mean, it’s a little bit more complicated this year, and I can’t, kind of, speak to all the details, but one of the things that we do is a voice of the consumer fan survey at the end of each game. And so, if you come to a game, we ask you kind of about your experience, one of the questions, or a couple of the questions that we ask are about, like, how did you arrive? And ferry is an option now, right? And so, yeah, how did you arrive? How did you like it? Did you park? What was your experience? So, that’s just general, how did you enjoy your overall experience part of the, again, it’s called the voice of the consumer survey that comes out after every game. But yeah, there’s no question that we’re going through some conversations about all of the construction around here, right? So yeah, NYCFC is being built as we speak. USTA has some renovations coming, and then obviously a lot of people know about Metropolitan Park with Cohen and Hard Rock. So yeah, I think the important thing is we just want to constantly communicate to people the different ways of getting here. And then yeah, to your point, how do we measure whether there are ways that we can continue to improve that? And it kind of goes in the general fan experience. So, we want everybody to have a good experience in Citi Field, but we also want to make getting here enjoyable from beginning to end however we can.

Karen: Yeah. So, I’d love to kind of segue into some of that experience because how much of your work—or is it the work of people on your team?—are informing some of the marketing team, for example, that’s creating in store experiences or even informing your social media campaigns during the offseason that, kind of, brought us to where we are now or will continue. Like, is your team handling that also, or is that a different insights team?

Craig: I mean, it depends. It’s kind of case by case. We do handle kind of all of the statistical modeling, we do handle all of the data ingestion and delivery, and so if somebody is trying to figure out, you know, how did we perform year-over-year in social media growth, or how are we thinking about engagement to the degree that we have that data, which, especially when you talk about social media, is challenging, right because now Twitter—or whatever, X—is privately owned by somebody who has his own way of thinking about the world, and then Meta has kind of combined Facebook and Instagram, and so even the ability to kind of look at trends in Meta a little bit more challenging than you would expect from most third-party providers. So, if we have the data, we certainly are the gatekeepers of what it means and how to think about it, but it’s not like we’re standing over people’s shoulders saying, “Do this because of data.” I mean, we do try to be a data-informed organization, but we don’t take credit for, kind of, making sure that every post is going to be X, Y, or Z, or every initiative follows a certain strict rubric. 

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Well, I can tell you, Mr. And Mrs. Met, [laugh] going to late night, this—[laugh] I don’t know if you saw it. Did you see it? Did you see it?

Craig: Mm-hm. Yeah. 

Karen: I shared that with so many people, and then the follow up, when Seth Meyers actually shared, like, I just couldn’t even with that. And people were like, “Okay, Karen, settle down.” I’m like, “This is hilarious.” And the personification of—well, and they’re people. Anyway, Mr. And Mrs. Met are wonderful mascots, if you don’t know. Again, if you know you know, but if you don’t, they’re this wonderful, relatable couple. And hats off to the team that is doing a really great job with them. Their in-field experiences are always fantastic. I can’t say more about them. We just are so fond of all of them.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, no, they’re the best, and definitely my team takes zero credit for them. They’re way more creative than us, but they’re amazing, and they do, they—when we talk about how everybody’s not a monolith, I think everybody does like Mr. And Mrs. Met. But my daughter especially is just like, “Are we going to see Mrs. Met?” If I’m taking her to Citi Field. I’m like, “Well, yeah, and baseball.” She’s like, “Yeah, but Mrs. Met?” And I’m like, “Okay yeah.”

Karen: Also, Mrs. Met. Yeah. 

Craig: And it is, it’s important for all ages. I mean, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t love them, but especially, like, kids. I mean, that’s a huge attraction. And getting your picture with Mr. And Mrs. Met is no small thing.

Karen: Yeah, it’s no small thing. I know. It’s so fun. And again, I keep wanting to talk about just, like, in-field experiences in general. And I have to keep saying, like, all right, back to insights. But one other thing you also—it’s just been within the last few years where you have this sort of dance team now that’s dancing on top of the dugout. That was just within the last few years, as far as I knew. Because for a while there we were sitting over by first base, and then we moved to third base for a while because of sun patterns, anyway. And then we saw the dance team, and we were like, well, why wasn’t that happening when we were sitting over there? So, now we have to rethink all of our life’s choices. So yeah, just more—just what fun you’re bringing to, anyway, the stadium. And I imagine those things are in part of that kind of post-experience survey work that you’re doing, where you’re asking people how they feel about these things.

Craig: Yeah, that’s exactly right. So, they’re called the Queen’s Crew, and we do ask people, like, “Did you see them? What did you think?” Same thing is true of the five borough mascot race. 

Karen: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: And so, it’s like, when we added that, one of the things that we implemented from a survey almost immediately last year was the first year of the five borough mascot race. And everybody was like, we love it. This is great, but—as, you know, with all survey data—they said, but we think that it should be more than just the race. We think that they should be on the concourse. We would love to take pictures with them. And so, that was great to hear because it was straight from our fans. And then the person who was in charge of it, Tricia, decided this is something I think we could do immediately. Like, we don’t have to wait until next evening. Some of the ideas are great, but they’re like, they require lead time and hiring or ordering. This was something where it was like, they’re here, and if that’s what the fans want, let’s just do it, and so she made it happen. And then the scores continue to go up. They’re like, yeah, we still love the race, and this is awesome. And so—it—we wouldn’t have known that.

Karen: And were people taking pictures with the Bronx, or was the Bronx just sort of sitting over by itself [laugh]? 

Craig: It’s a great question. I mean, the truth is, you know, we asked about whether the Bronx should ever win. Not shockingly, not a lot of people love the idea that the Bronx would win, fair and square. And so, it was great, but it was also justification of, like, of course, why would we let the Bronx? So, the answer, I don’t know whether everybody took pictures. My feeling is that if they were taking pictures of the Bronx, it was more as a, like, you know, not as I love this [unintelligible 00:31:27], and more as a look at the draft that is funny and exciting, and I hope never wins, or never will win. So, I think it was kind of, you know, the Bronx is in on the joke. And so, I again, I don’t have data to support who took pictures of what, but suffice it to say that our fans don’t love the Bronx, but they do love the Bronx’s role in the five borough mascot race. So.

Karen: I love it. I love it. So, I have kind of another question about all of that. Just as we’re thinking about the in-field experience, I’m also thinking of, you know, every—for those of you who’ve not been—and maybe they do this at other ball fields, too, but we all vote on what song to sing, kind of karaoke too, right? We all—and, you know, sometimes there’s overlap, you know, and sometimes it’s like—and overlap, I mean, you know, Time After Time, like, some of the songs rotate through. But that’s a real-time survey, real time happening live. It’s not fixed, right? [laugh].

Craig: Correct. [laugh]. No it is not fixed. 

Karen: Like, it is happening live every time [laugh]. 

Craig: Those are real votes.

Karen: Yeah so, super fun. That’s one of another fan-favorite experience. And then, of course, we all get to sing to whatever song was at the top of the list. So yes—

Craig: They’re all sing-alongs, which is the best, right? Like everybody gets to—you get 40,000 people singing a Billy Joel song or a Journey song or whatever. It’s great. 

Karen: Yeah, it’s very cool. So, all right, so kind of back to some of the topics that I really want to talk to you about. You know, when we talk about those lagging indicators and ticket sales and what’s going on there, I guess another thing I’m curious about is, do you see then, kind of, indicators of improvement? Like, you know, like, oh, things are things have turned a corner that you can pin on something almost real time. Like, are there moments beyond what happens in the offseason, but even, like, during the season, or is it really all wins and losses?

Craig: Hmm. I mean, wins and losses matter, right? Like, people want to be in a good emotional state, they’re going to give you better scores. But we also, when we look at survey data, we try to control for that. And so, we’ve got enough data at this point that we can control, especially when you’re talking about a three to five-game win streak or losing streak. And so, we’re able to do that. Now, when the team goes through such fluctuations as we do, it becomes a little bit more difficult, and so that’s kind of the first thought that I have on, you know, how you control and think about the data. The challenge we have, though, is—and this is where, especially when it comes to survey research and the voice of the consumer, I tried to never look at things individually because the sample size is too small and the circumstances are all so different. And so, because we also do statistical modeling, we understand that getting 30 people to say this was great, or 30 people to say that it was raw—or it was terrible, when you’re talking about 3 million people coming through the gates, it’s not a huge sample size. And so, it’s important for us to kind of keep the context of, what are we really hearing? Because if somebody says that the beer is great, but they’ve only been to 75-degree temperature games and we always win and we don’t control for it, then all of a sudden it starts to become less important. So, long-winded way of saying that it’s really important for us to, kind of, pay attention to statistical standards and know that just because a few people said something on a specific day when we’re on a ten-game winning streak, you can’t compare that to when we were on a ten-game losing streak. And so, we really have to make it a volume play, and we need to try to—and this is really hard because everybody wants information right away—but we have to try to remind ourselves that some answers might take time. And that’s where benchmarking comes up, where it’s like, you know, we recognize that over 162 games, we’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some, so don’t jump to any conclusions because one day people were happy with X, or one day people were upset with Y. So, it really is just making sure that you’ve got the right sample size, that the variables you can’t control for are kind of drowned out by that sample size, so that you can at least, kind of, have a decent regression model or something that allows you to understand it a little bit more cleanly. Because no matter what, in no seasons will even a ten game stretch be the same as a different time game stretch. You might have the same record, but you’re always going to be facing different pitchers, you’re always going to have different lineups, you’re always going to have different team expectations, and so we need to try to control for as much as we can, recognizing that we’re never going to have a fully controlled environment.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Wait, I think back to where we were in the beginning of this interviewing, you know, talking about your background, right, and you know, you’ve been sort of in political science and you’ve been in finance, and I just keep thinking, like, how—Astros aside—how different sports data and analytics is, really, from some of that other work. But are there lessons that carried across categories for you? Like, are there things that are, like, these are just my business practices that you could share to maybe inspire the listeners who are, they are data analytics professionals, but they are not in as great a category as yours.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, the way I look at it is, even though I’ve been across sectors, I think about jobs always as three things. It’s what you do, it’s who you do it for, and who you do it with. And so, what you do, data analytics in all of those different industries is kind of the same, right? It’s paying attention to statistical significance, it’s paying attention to modeling. Who you do it for is the Astros, the Mets, the JP Morgan, government, whether it’s White House or mayors, and then who you do it with is constantly evolving, right? It’s your boss, it’s your team, your peers, your colleagues across the organization. That last one doesn’t matter where you are, right? The people are people. Some of them you love and you keep in touch with forever. But the first one, what you do, I’ve always done, kind of, two main things, data analytics and project program management. And what I tell people is, like, I built foundational skills there and those skills allow me to problem solve, right? I look at something and I realized data analytics isn’t where I started, but once I realized that it can have a real effect on sustainable outcomes and sustainable success, I started to gravitate towards it. I always liked math, but I didn’t grow up—I grew up learning math the way many of us grew up, right, before any generative AI certainly, but even before data analytics was super sexy, before Moneyball was a thing. And so, I just always love solving problems, and that’s where it’s like data allows you to solve bigger problems, faster, more consistently, and so, kind of, using that program management and program operations lens and overlaying data analytics, it was a nice marriage. And so, all of my jobs, no matter who the organization was, who the, kind of, top line was, always fit that category of solving problems and trying to do it in a repeatable way.

Karen: Yeah. Very cool and very insightful. I think there’s a lot of people, and I remember one time I was interviewing a woman who was currently working for the MBA, and she was in media, kind of, media, audience measurement—I might have mentioned this on our pre-call, I’m not sure—but anyway, we were talking about how long it took her to kind of get that which she considered her dream job. It took her a long time. It took her many years working, you know, really hard and diligently in other categories, and then a very lengthy interview process that actually happened twice. It was a long journey to kind of land that job that, you know, that she was then able to say, like, “I’ve reached this level. I’ve arrived.” So, great advice. Anyway, thank you for sharing. I have to—this is, like, I’m looking at the clock, and I’m saying, you know, here it is. You know, I told you what time we’d wrap up. So, this is the point where I say anything that we had planned on talking about, or even talked about on our pre-call that you wish we had touched on, that I didn’t get to today?

Craig: No, I mean, nothing comes to mind. I think that last part of the conversation around the fact that, like, you’re building foundational skills, and you’re enjoying the path, and not always only focused on where you’re headed, that specific end state, you can have an interesting set of experiences. And I think one of the things that it’s afforded me, that I’m proud of is that it allows me to kind of think in a way that creates a lot of analogies, right? So hey, I’ve never seen this before, but from experience doing X, Y or Z, I might have a different way of thinking about this. I’m proud of that, and I enjoy it, and so to the point of, like, it allows me to solve problems, that is fun for me because I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of it. And so, if you create a strong foundation and it allows you to kind of jump from thing to thing, even if it doesn’t make you better, which I think it probably does, it’s at least, in my opinion, going to be more fun, and kind of allows you to again, kind of ‘be where your feet are.’ And I know that’s an overplayed phrase, but it allows you to just say, I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years. And maybe that’s a bad question, right? “Where you see yourself, in five”—I don’t know, but, like, I would like to not give up on the next four years of just doing things that I find interesting, both intellectually and just like on a real human, personal level.

Karen: Yeah, yeah, I love that, by the way. And that’s such a great quote, you know the, ‘be where your feet are.’ One of our taglines that we use at Greenbook is, ‘The Future of Insights.’ And I always like to ask folks like yourself that show up and you know, it might be insights; it might be the future of data and analytics. Like, you know, in your opinion, what do you see in the future? Even if you may not see yourself in the next five years, you’re open to, you know, whatever comes along your way, but what about from an industry perspective, what do you see the future bringing to us all?

Craig: Yeah, I think we have to figure out generative AI. I mean, obviously that’s the cop-out because everybody’s talking about it, and we certainly using the ton here at the Met, but you know, when it comes to market research, like, what role if any of the synthetic data play, and how do you use it? Does it replace, or does it complement? And I think in every way that I’ve looked at Gen AI, I look at as a compliment, and part of that is potentially self-serving, but like, I don’t think there’s a single thing that I believe it replaces, and I say that from, you know, a data modeling thing, where you can create incredible models with Claude and generative AI, but I don’t think that it gets rid of the ability to, kind of, critically think, and so you can’t just completely surrender your cognitive abilities. But that’s where I think it’s headed, I mean, whether we like it or not. And I think that the thing that I’m interested in is, like, how does it make us better without replacing our ability to think critically? And I’m excited about that. I think that’s really cool. I also think that we have some governance questions, we have some ethical questions, we have some societal questions about, kind of, who we want to be and we as a world, but, you know, we as a country don’t tend to answer these questions quickly, right? Like social media, and thinking of the—there’s a lot of good that comes with social media; there’s also a lot of bad. It takes us a long time to pivot. And I just hope that we kind of come to something in generative AI that doesn’t take us so long and allows us to kind of use it as a tool, and doesn’t allow it to use us as a tool. And so, that’s where I think it’s going. Obviously, generative AI is the easy answer, but I am hopeful that we can accelerate the way of using it in a smart, human-focused, critically thinking way.

Karen: Yeah, I can’t agree with you more, actually. And as you had, kind of, we’re talking earlier, I was thinking, it feels like the real-time need to measure, kind of, the customer experience, the in-field experience and all that stuff, like, I don’t know that synthetic can do that work, you know?

Craig: No, I don’t think it can.

Karen: Nobody can because it’s a very—you know, attending a sporting event is a very human thing from, you know, what’s happening in the parking lot, which could vary by—you know, I remember a football game where, you know, I jammed a thumb trying to play catch because I’m not—I don’t even like football. What was I even doing there? But I jammed my thumb. I don’t even remember who the game was, but I remember jamming my thumb. How can a synthetic persona even, like, kind of recreate a memory from a game? I just don’t know that your category is going to be conducive to synthetic the way so many other categories out there are. It’s not CPG, right?

Craig: Yeah. And I think that’s right. And obviously we’ll see where it goes, but I think one of the ways that we’ve started to think about it here is, synthetic data might be great for something that you don’t want to get out there, right? Like, so, hey, we want to know, should we offer this discount or this discount, right? Like, yeah, you don’t want somebody to step that and throw that on Reddit. So, it’s more about kind of ideation, potentially for synthetic but it’s not about, “Hey, Karen, how was your experience? Hey, what was your emotional state? Hey, how did your children react to this?” Right? So, that’s where I think, like, it’s complimentary in nature, where it’s like, there are some things that you don’t want to ask your fans if you’re not ready to commit because you don’t want it to go viral or anything. It’s just like, you know, again, discounts or different players or whatever, like, how would they react to X or Y or Z? And so, it’s this, like, hypothetical thing where you’re asking them to think about the future. Maybe synthetic has a role there, but when you’re asking them about their actual experience and how they actually felt during parking or driving or the seventh inning or the eighth inning karaoke, like, just ask the people, right? Like, that’s real data. And so, that’s how I kind of look at that as, like, it can be incredibly powerful as, like, a partner, but there’s no way it should ever replace human emotion, human feeling, human thought.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. And certainly, emotions and thoughts are high [laugh] at Citi Field.

Craig: Yes.

Karen: Oh, my goodness. Craig, I just, I want to thank you so much for joining me. I feel like, you know, I promised you a wrap by a certain time, and here we are at that time. Really just thank you. If you’re listening and you don’t know, like, one of the things we always say is ‘you got to believe,’ so I’m glad that slogan still is alive and kicking because we’re really trying to believe in our team this year. So, thank you for everything that you’re doing to guide the people that are making some decisions, and we’re trusting the coaches, right [laugh]?

Craig: Yeah. We’ll do this again, if you’ll have me after we win the World Series.

Karen: Oh, gosh. From your lips to God’s ears because that’s what we pray for [laugh]. Craig, thank you so, so much. This is the portion of the program where I thank everybody. But our editor, Big Bad Audio, Thank you for what you’re doing. To all of our listeners, thank you for showing up. Thank you for indulging me, and I say that to you as well, Craig. Thank you so much. I’m going to have a smile on my face till the next game for sure, thinking about this recording. I appreciate your time.

Craig: Thanks for having me.

Karen: My pleasure, my pleasure. Brigette, thank you for doing all you do as well. And until next time, friends, that’s our episode of the Greenbook Podcast. We’ll see you soon. Bye-bye, everyone. Let’s go Mets.