It’s finally here! The 2024 #MetLifeTakeover is ready to go. Okay, technically it’s in 2025 given that the game is week 18 of the NFL season, but it still counts as the 2024 Takeover. Things are going to be a bit different this year so make sure you read below before heading over to metlifetakeover.com to grab your tickets!
Much of the Takeover will be the same this year. As per usual we have over 900 tickets available over a few sections in the upper deck. We are still going to be doing an amazing tailgate with our partners at Urbain Tailgate and the #MetLifeTakeover pre-party at our bar Slattery’s is back after a year hiatus. Even in the cold, this should be another amazing year even if we are all hoping that the Dolphins are resting half the team to get ready for the playoffs.
The changes this year have (almost) everything to do with the NFL’s frustrating flex schedule. We know the game is going to be week 18, but we don’t know if it’s going to be a day game or a night game or on Saturday or Sunday. Because of this we have a number of changes:
We cannot provide bus transportation from our bar Slattery’s this year. The bus companies aren’t going to hold the whole weekend open for us. We do plan on meeting as a group to walk over to Penn Station together before the game so we can still go together to some degree.
The pre-party is going to happen on Friday night at Slattery’s even if the game is on Sunday. We don’t want to make Slattery’s hold open both Friday and Saturday for us. No matter what this event is always a blast. So much fun to catch up with everyone and meet new people who traveled in for the game. It’s in the heart of the city so you can plan some fun tourist stuff around it too.
Because we aren’t doing a tailgate/bus/game tickets package we are going to be selling the game tickets and Urban Tailgate will be selling the tailgate tickets. I realize this is a bit of a pain for you guys, but it will make our lives so much easier. To make up for it use code DOLFANSNYC on the Urban Tailgate site to get $20 off a tailgate ticket before the start of the season.
The game tickets have gone up in price. That has nothing to with the flex scheduling, and everything to do with Jets fans hope that an aging checked out Aaron Rodgers is going to save their franchise. The tickets are still cheaper than you will get from Ticketmaster and we are cutting our margins quite a bit on pre-season ticket sales, so don’t wait until the regular season to buy because prices go up $25.
We have all the full details including the exhaustive FAQ on the Takeover website so I hope you read all of that, especially if this is your first time coming. It goes over transportation options, tailgate details, location of the bar, the seat selection process and everything.
So that’s it. I can’t wait to see everyone this year. Phins up!
The #MetLifeTakeover was a huge success this year and I just want to thank all of you for making it amazing. We weren’t able to get as many tickets this year because the Jets thought they were gonna be good this year (lol), but we sold out before the season even started and gave out our section number to the hundreds and hundreds of people who emailed us requesting tickets too late. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had 2500 Dolphins fans sitting together because our sections were packed. With the great tailgate and the Dolphins dominating on the field it was just an amazing day.
Speaking of the tailgate, we had a huge crowd all day and a video I took from the top of our U-Haul went viral, being reposted by tons of national media outlets, and even a local TV station reached out about using it, although I have no idea if they actually did. Speaking of TV, the film crew from HBO’s Hard Knocks came out to the tailgate, interviewed Michelle and I as well as some other fans and did a short segment during episode two of the show. If you didn’t watch the episode you can watch the short segment here.
We had some cool guests at the tailgate this year. Dolphins legends Joe Rose and Nat Moore never miss a tailgate but we also had a couple of social media stars, with Kickball Dad returning to the Takeover to film some videos, and elementary teacher extraordinaire Mary Martinez celebrated her 30th birthday with us. We had two Miami Dolphins Fans of the Year in attendance, Dolphreaky and the newest Fan of the Year Chris Barker. Solo D performed as he always does and my cousin came out because her husband is a huge Dolphins fan and that was really cool for me.
On the charity front, we raised over $6000 just from raffle and merch sales and that doesn’t include the money we made from ticket sales. We are unfortunately dealing with some possible unexpected expenses because of an unfortunately incident that we won’t get into, but we should be able to donate over $10,000 to charity this year. We will be announcing donations as they happen on Twitter but hopefully at the end of the year I can do a run down of the good that money is doing. By the way, all donations to us are tax deductible so if anyone is interested in donating please reach out.
Shout out to DJ Drell, our new regular Slattery’s DJ for killing it at his first #MetLifeTakeover and Solo D for his yearly performance. Solo came to the second or third one of these we ever did and hasn’t missed one since. He’s become such a huge part of our tailgate experience. Thanks as always to our tailgate partners Urban Tailgate. Those guys take everything off our plate and handle all the food, drinks, games and simple stuff like getting there hours before the gates open to make sure we get our regular spot. And lastly, huge thanks to all our volunteers who we couldn’t do any of this without. From our bus captains, to the people selling merch and raffle tickets, to just random people who grab a bin from the bus and bring it over to the tailgate for us, we appreciate you guys a ton.
Anyway, I did a terrible job of documenting the event, but I did technically take some photos, so I got a gallery of stuff for you guys to look through. Don’t worry though, we will have one hell of a recap video for you guys coming a lot sooner than last year’s video. I can’t wait for you to see it.
The problems aren’t happening for everyone, we have already sold a LOT of tickets. Really impressive start even with the shopping cart system being messed up. If you are one of the people having issues you can try a few different things. The first is try a different browser. It works for me on Chrome but not Safari for example. Try on your phone, or try on a desktop. Just whatever options you can think of, try that first. If you still can’t get it to work, just keep adding random stuff to your cart and if anything adds try deleting it. When that happens for some reason everything will just suddenly show up in your cart and you can adjust it from there. Honestly the whole thing is so weird and I have sent a bunch of support requests trying to figure it out but haven’t had any luck yet.
If you still can’t get it to work, just wait a couple days because we are going to get it figured out. We aren’t gonna sell out of tickets in the middle of the summer so don’t panic. And if you are still having issues in a week, just email us at dolfansnyc at gmail and we will get you sorted out another way.
Okay, now that we have talked about troubleshooting, let’s talk about the event.
As you probably know by now we are throwing another massive group takeover when the Dolphins play the Jets in New Jersey on October 9th. We do a free party the night before at our bar Slattery’s, an all you can eat and drink tailgate before the game and of course we buy multiple sections of upper deck tickets so you can be surrounded by Dolphins fan at an away game. There’s no experience like it. We even do bus transportation to the game from our bar Slattery’s.
If you haven’t been before, check out our video page to get the full experience and then head on over to our FAQ if you have any questions. If you have been before you know what to expect so let me just give you the updates. The big update is the price unfortunately. EVERYTHING has gone up in price since last year. The Jets are charging us way more for tickets, food prices have gone way up and my god the busses got expensive. This means two things 1) You are gonna pay a little more this year and 2) We are gonna make less money for charity. Ultimately this event is about bringing us all together and while the charity aspect is a huge part of what we do, hopefully we can make up those margins by doing some raffles and merch sales. We need to make this event affordable.
Ticket prices if you order before the season starts are $65. That’s exactly what they were if you bought during the season last year so it’s not bad. We have had more expensive years ticket wise in the past so I don’t think that’s a big deal. Food prices are up more than 20% but our tailgate partner Urban Tailgate is also willing to take a cut on his margins and we are offering the full food and drink package for $85 which is exactly where it was last year too. We had a $10 off deal for a little bit last year which we don’t have this year but the tailgate is $100 after the season starts so it’s still a pretty good deal. You can also just hangout out with us at the tailgate and BYO if you like. Everyone is welcome.
The biggest increase is the bus and it’s dramatic. In the past we charged $40 for round trip tickets and we made a decent bit of money for charity on those and this year we have to charge $50 and we might end up actually losing money on the bus. There are cheaper public transportation options so if you are on a budget look into those, obviously not as fun as a rowdy bus of Dolphins fans, but we just want to make sure you know about it. We are pretty upset about the bus situation honestly.
Oh and one more thing, we introduced “The Total Package” last year where we offered transportation, tailgate ticket and game ticket at a discount. Unfortunately we can’t offer a discount anymore, so we are giving everyone who buys the total package a free DolfansNYC drink koozie. It’s obviously not as good as saving $10 but we wanted to do something fun for you guys. We will also have extra koozies for sale at the tailgate for $5 if anyone wants to pick one up who didn’t get the Total Package.
I realize this post has been a little bit of a bummer, but this event is so amazing and we do so much good that I had to end it off with some good news. We did a raffle to win two Total Packages to the Takeover and in the process raised almost $900 for the National Compassion Fund who makes direct donations to victims of mass casualty events like the recent events in Buffalo and Uvalde. The winner of the raffle was actually 2020 Dolphins Fan Of The Year Big E who then immediately donated the tickets back to us and bought his own, so we will find a deserving recipient for them and let your you guys know about that when we figure it out. Really great from Ian.
Thank you guys so much for everything and we can’t wait to see you on October 9th, or evens sooner at Slattery’s!
Thanks you all for coming out to the 2021 #MetLifeTakeover. What an absolute blast! From the party at Slattery’s to the tailgate to the Dolphins play on the field everything went off without a hitch. Despite a slightly less than normal turnout (the team’s record, the pandemic and the Jets only selling us 700 tickets didn’t help) we still had one of our most successful years. Thanks to you guys we raised over $6000 for charity between raffle, auction and merch sales. And that doesn’t even include the money we made off the tickets sold. That money is going back into our war chest to make new merch, raffle prizes and other expenses for next season, but it will all eventually be turned into even more money that we can use to do more good. The merch/raffle/auction money will be going to the Miami Dolphins Foundation, The Dolphins Cancer Challenge and the Jason Taylor Foundation.
So here’s a quick breakdown on the weekend. On Saturday night we had a great crowd at our bar Slattery’s Midtown Pub. We had DJ Syckturtle spin both that night and the tailgate the next day. We had a live auction that raised over $1000 on just three items and we had a big raffle as well for a bunch of great signed stuff. One of our members even brought a team signed ball from the Philbin era that had some great signatures on it despite how we may feel about those years. Another one of our members donated a Marino jersey that raised $275 in the live auction. Special shout out to Robert who bought it AND the Christian Wilkins signed jersey for $500!
One of the coolest parts of Saturday night, and the tailgate, was that the Miami Dolphins entire podcast network came out. We had Dolphins legend OJ McDuffie and his The Fish Tank co-host Seth Levit (and DJ DJ Prēc), Drive Time’s Travis Wingfield and Dolphins Today host Johanna Torres all come out and party with us both days. Nat Moore and Jason Jenkins also came out during the tailgate… those guys never miss one. Want to give a special shoutout to OJ who signed autograph after autograph and posed for picture after picture the entire time he was there. And another shout out to Seth who also runs the Jason Taylor Foundation who donated the Jason Taylor jersey to our game day raffle. He told us to give all the money to the Miami Dolphins Foundation in the DCC but we raised so much that we had to surprise him with donation to the JT Foundation as well.
The tailgate itself was an absolute party. We took over the entire parking lot between L4 and L7. It was massive. Our partners at Urban Tailgate killed it again. They were a little understaffed at the last minute and that led to some long lines, but the food was incredible. We will get that worked out for next year and make sure the lines aren’t nearly as bad. Huge shout out to our friends at Sailor Jerry for providing not only Sailor but also some bottles from their sister brands Reyka Vodka and Fistfull of Bourbon.
The game couldn’t have gone much better. The Jets hung around for a bit, but in the second half the Dolphins put them to bed and you could hear our “Let’s Go Dolphins!” chants on TV. Several of the Dolphins players Tweeted about us after the game and the #MetLifeTakeover hashtag absolutely exploded on Twitter. I couldn’t even keep up with it. We even got a little write up in the Miami New Times. Very cool.
So thanks again everyone for making this year one of the best years ever. I can’t wait to do it all again next year. I got a pretty good gallery of photos for you too. I have a back injury so I didn’t do a great job documenting it, but there are still some fun shots here. Also we have the 2021 #MetlifeTakeover video coming soon. That should be amazing. Now go check out the photos below! (Click here to view the gallery directly on Flickr where it looks less wonky than the embedded gallery viewer.)
We are so psyched to be able to bring you another #MetLifeTakeover! It was obviously incredibly disappointing to have to go virtual last year, but with things getting back to normal we are full speed ahead with the 2021 Takeover (November 21st, 1pm at MetLife Stadium) with a full tailgate, our normal massive group ticket purchase and bus transportation from our bar Slattery’s Midtown Pub all for less that you have paid in the past.
We were able to get a great ticket discount because we put a down payment on tickets last year during the pandemic and we are passing that on to you. Tickets are only $65 and just $55 if you order your tickets before the start of the season.This is the cheapest we have been able to sell tickets in years and it’s pretty incredible. Our round trip bus from Slattery’s is also less this year, returning to the $30 price after an increase in 2019.
Speaking of Slattery’s, they officially reopen September 1st but the current plan is to do a small scale Dolfans NYC pre launch for the final preseason game on August 29th. More details to come on that, but it’s pretty exciting news as they have been closed for over a year.
Our other big update is that for the first time we are selling tailgate tickets directly this year. Food and alcohol costs have risen this year so our partners at Urban Tailgate have had to raise prices, fortunately we worked out a deal where if you buy directly from us you can save $10 on the all you can eat/drink tailgate ticket and $5 on the non-alcoholic ticket. With our discounts they are priced at $75 and $50 respectively which is still one hell of a deal considering the super high end food and drink options. You can always BYO too, but we make it easy for you with our fully catered tailgate.
The other great thing about selling tailgate tickets directly is that we can now sell you our TOTAL PACKAGE BUNDLE with a game ticket, round-trip bus transportation from NYC and a tailgate ticket at an even bigger discount. All three options are only $150 or $125 with no alcohol. It’s a hell of a deal for an entire day of you just sitting back and relaxing and enjoying the Dolphins stomp all over the New Jersey Jets.
Keep in mind ALL prices go up after the start of the season so make sure to get your ticket purchases in before September 12th. Plus the earlier you order, the better the seats! Also, if you want to sit in a “Family Friendly” row, you MUST order before September 12th as well so we can make sure you guys are all sitting together.
The 2019 #MetLifeTakeover video is finally here! It took way longer than we wanted it’s been a crazy winter for all of us here at Dolfans NYC and I am just glad we finally got it done and I think you guys will see that it came out great. 2019 was not exactly a great year for the Dolphins, and this game didn’t go super great on the field, but despite our lower than normal numbers, we had one hell of a tailgate and having two full sections of Dolphins fans is still pretty damn impactful. You could easily hear us on TV yelling from the upper decks.
The video includes interviews with Dolphins alumni Nat Moore, Dolfans NYC regular Shawn Wooden, and Joe Rose plus the Dolphins Jason Jenkin’s who presented us with a framed custom Dolphins jersey celebrating our 10th anniversary of our Jets game takeovers. The video also includes interviews with South Florida South Sentinel Dolphins writers Safid Deen and Omar Kelly and of course a ton of Dolphins fans.
Huge thanks to everyone who helped out, Oscar Collazos for hosting, Curtis from RizeOptix for directing and editing the video, Urban Tailgate for the great food and drink, Solo D for the live performance, Tropic 2.0 & DJ Syck Turtle for the tailgate music and Sailor Jerry for sponsoring the event. Also, a big shout out to Hotels.com for coming out and filming a video about us. And of course big thanks to the Miami Dolphins for all the support including setting up a live taping of The Joe Rose show in the middle of our tailgate.
We also want to thank all of you guys for helping us raise over $10,00 for charity this season. And we need to ask your help again. We are trying to raise money for the 14 members of the Slattery’s staff who have been laid off because of the Coronavirus. So far we have raised enough to give them each $200, but we would like to do more, so if you want to help out, please PayPal us whatever you can to DolfansNYC@gmail.com. We are going to randomly select one of the people who donate to win a prize once the world gets back to normal, but we don’t know what that is yet because we need to be able to get back into Slattery’s to see what we have to give away.
Okay! That’s it. Please take the time to watch the video, we put a lot of work into it. Plus, I have a feeling you guys don’t have anything else to be doing while you are stuck in quarantine! NYC and Florida are two of the hardest hit places so please, please stay safe out there! Phins up!
Our #MetLifeTakeover video is taking longer than expected to get finished, so I wanted to get up something to hold you guys over in the meantime. During the Jets game the Dolphins and Hotels.com followed us around and did a little video about us, Slattery’s and the event. It was pretty cool but they only posted it on social media so we wanted an easier to find permanent location for it. We put it on our Vimeo page and I figured I would post it for you guys as well.
It’s a great video and hope you guys will check it out if you haven’t already. We will be back soon with our official #MetLifeTakeover wrap up video!
Wow, this weekend was amazing, well at least it was until that pass interference review… But even with the loss the #MetLifeTakeover event was a huge success. With the Dolphins having some issues on the field we had less fans join us this year, but it turns out 500+ Dolfans is still a huge party!
Not only was it a blast but between the pre-party at Slattery’s on Saturday and the tailgate on Sunday we raised a TON of money for charity. Our raffle for a signed Dan Marino/ Zach Thomas hat ended up raising over $700 for the Dan Marino Foundation and we raised a lot more money throughout the weekend. We also collected three huge boxes of toys for Toys For Tots and the Dolphins came out as part of their Huddle For 100 initiative and set up a table where people could make Christmas cards for troops overseas.
We also had a South Florida CBS affiliate come do a live Facebook video from the tailgate which was pretty cool as well. We will have a bunch more video coming soon as the Dolphins did a video about us in collaboration with Hotels.com and we of course have our yearly wrap up video that should be out by the end of the season.
We had a bunch of Dolphins alumni make it to the tailgate. Along with Joe Rose and Nat Moore who are regulars we also had Shawn Wooden, Terry Kirby and Ed Perry. Shawn’s son plays football at Columbia so he comes by Slattery’s enough that he’s part of our crew now. Glad he got to check out the Takeover.
Huge thanks to Solo D, DJ Tropic and DJ Syck Turtle for providing the music for the tailgate and Outsnapped for doing our photobooth. (See the photo booth photos here!) Thanks to Sailor Jerry for providing a bunch of rum as always and Hotels.com for providing a $500 gift card and pregame field passes for the raffle.
And finally, huge thanks to Urban Tailgate for running the catered tailgate again. They make our lives so much easier and we are doing it all again on Sunday! We decided to do a scaled down tailgate for the Giants game. Tailgate tickets are only $45 ($35 for food only) and will feature the same great food, just a few less options and of course all you can drink alcohol. Get your tailgate tickets here! Prices go up to $55 if you wait until game day. We will be in the same spot, bus lot, L4 and feel free to BYO as well. The tailgate won’t have a live DJ, but we will have music and our merch for sale, cornhole set up and a bunch of other stuff and we still have a bunch of the boom sticks we gave away on Sunday left, so come and grab one to bring inside.
So that’s the full wrap up and now it’s time to look at some photos. I didn’t do a great job taking photos and working the event at the same time, but I think you are going to enjoy them anyway! Thanks for coming and hope to see a ton of you guys on Sunday! Phins up!
It’s finally here! The 2018 #MetLifeTakeover video took us forever to finish, but I think the results are worth waiting for. For the second year in a row the video was directed/edited by RizeOptix and hosted by comedian Oscar Collazos. We loved their work on the 2017 Takeover video and we were glad they could do it again. We have actually teamed up with RizeOptix again to work on something special for our 10th anniversary next year, but don’t tell anyone!
The video is of course a recap of the 2018 #MetLifeTakeover during our week 2 win against the Jets at MetLife Stadium. It features footage from our Saturday night pre-party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub, our massive tailgate and we got some pretty amazing footage from inside the game as well. In past years we didn’t have a ton of footage from inside the stands but this year we got some great stuff including footage from across the stadium where you can see how fully we took over the upper deck.
The video includes interviews with Dolphins alumni Mark Clayton, Mark Duper, Kim Bokamper, Joe Rose and Nat Moore who were all at the tailgate. Additionally there are interviews with Jason Jenkins who is one of our biggest supporters in the Dolphins organization, musician Solo D and a bunch of Dolfans. We unfortunately had to cut some of the fan interviews because we had so many, but you might see them as Instagram videos next year!
Before we get to the video I just wanted to give some shoutouts: The Dolphins organization for always supporting our club, the Jason Taylor Foundation for donating a signed JT jersey for our raffle (We ended up raising $2000 for the Foundation!), Urban Tailgate for doing all the hard work for our pregame party, Sailor Jerry for providing a ton of rum, Slattery’s as always for all the help on a day where we are actively taking people AWAY from their bar and of course everyone who came out, supported us, spread the word or donated anything to the charity. We have raised tens of thousands of dollars over the 10 years we have been doing this and we couldn’t do any of it without you guys.
See you guys next year for the 10th anniversary of Dolfans NYC! We will be doing TWO #MetLifeTakeovers as the Dolphins play both the Jets and the Giants next year!
Okay, it’s video time! Please share this with all your fellow Dolfans and let us know what you think! Oh, and make sure you watch until the very end!
The #MetLifeTakeover was such an amazing success this year. From our pre-party to our tailgate to our fundraising efforts to our impact from the stands to the score of the game everything was pretty much perfect. I didn’t take a ton of photos because I was too busy running around the whole time but I wanted to give you a quick rundown of the weekend and share some of my photos, but the real fun is going to be when you see the video we filmed at the game. It should be pretty incredible.
The first group of photos are from our party on Saturday night at Slattery’s Midtown Pub. We had a great turnout and ended up raising about $1000 for the Miami Dolphins Foundation through our raffles and auctions. We had DJ Tropic spin and Solo D performed, or at least he tried to. The speakers at Slattery’s aren’t exactly ideal for a live performance, but it was still a lot of fun. I love this party we do every year. It gives everyone in from out of town a chance to meet up and check out our bar and our little Dolfans NYC museum we have in the back.
The rest of the photos are from our tailgate which has to have been the best one yet. Last year we ended up partnering with Urban Tailgate at the last minute and things went great but we had some minor issues that all seemed to have worked out this year. It was also the second year in a row that Joe Rose filmed his show “Cup of Joe” live from our tailgate and this year his guests included the legendary Marks Brothers, Mark Duper and Mark Clayton. He also had Kim Bokamper as a guest who has always been super supportive of our group. Nat Moore also came to the tailgate for the 7th or 8th time which is pretty amazing. He was the first person from the Dolphins who ever checked out the club way back when it was at Third and Long and there were only a few dozen of us. Michelle and I also went on the show and donated a $2000 check to the Miami Dolphins Foundation to Jason Jenkins from the Dolphins, another one of our early supporters at the team.
Once again DJ Tropic DJ’d at the tailgate and this time Solo D got some redemption from the bad sound the night before at Slattery’s. He played to a completely pumped group of people at the tailgate and the soundsystem was great. I took photos of his first song and then got myself up on Urban Tailgate’s UHaul so I could get a good group photo and I got to see the end of his set from a above and the crowd was rocking. It was so much fun to watch people just getting crazy hours before kickoff. That energy really carried over because despite the heat our section was loud and going nuts all game long.
Obviously the game was amazing and our crew could easily be heard on TV during the game and our camera guy got his camera into the stands so we should have some really amazing crowd footage for the first time ever. So huge shout out to Curtis and his crew from RizeOptix and our buddy Oscar who hosted the video for us. I can’t wait to see the finished thing and I can’t wait for you to see it, but in the meantime check out this trailer Curtis put together!
Lastly, we did a raffle for the Jason Taylor Foundation and they sent us a signed TJ jersey and we sold raffle tickets for it online, at the party at Slattery’s and all day long at the game, and we raised $1000 for the Foundation and then we as a club matched it. So that’s $2000 for the JT Foundation to go with the $2000 we donated to the Miami Dolphins Foundation. And that doesn’t even include the money we raised from merch and ticket sales. We are gonna be able to do a lot of good with the money we raised.
Now it’s time to check out my photos from both days of the #MetLifeTakeover and we will be back soon with our epic #MetLifeTakeover video!
