The economic forces of supply and demand will have a direct impact on New York Mets ticket prices in 2012.

Team officials have abandoned their previous pricing strategy of four color-coded ticket levels based on the attractiveness of the opponent and the date of the game in favor of what is known as "dynamic pricing."

In essence, the same seat at Citi Field could have a different price for each of the 81 home games. And for any individual game, that seat's price now can fluctuate daily, based on how much demand there is for the upcoming game.

Good summary article here on the Mets' decision to move to dynamic ticket pricing in 2012. This is rapidly becoming the standard in baseball with the Giants and Cardinals using it already.

Interestingly, one of my students asked the Kansas City Royals about this last week during our trip to visit their operation. The executive said, essentially, while they are open to anything, he did not think it would work in that market.

And that is true. In order for dynamic pricing to work, the market needs to be strong enough to create demand. The performance of the team or the market size have the greatest ability to create demand. Neither of those work for the Royals. Instead, the team employs different price points or bundling strategies for "premium" games against the Red Sox and the Yankees, the only teams which create significant demand issues for the Royals.

I am often asked if this would work in college, and I think the answer, at least for football, is no. Not enough inventory (81 MLB games v. 5-7 CFB games) and the fact that college football games are all-day events, not something someone decides to do on a whim. College basketball won't work either because schools push season tickets so they can force people to buy tickets to watch Double-Directional State v. Big Time U. in December. There is usually no demand for those games.