This recap video is very late, but honestly after three huge wins and the next takeover less than two weeks away, maybe it’s the perfect time to release it. Last year was such a blast. We had a really fun pre party at Slattery’s where we raised a ton of money for charity, then we had one of our smoothest tailgates ever, good weather and a huge win. We also had a bunch of the Dolphins media crew show up including Dolphins legend OJ McDuffie, his The Fish Tank podcast co-host and our old friend Seth Levitt, Travis Wingfield from Drive Time and Johanna Torres from Dolphins Today. Check out the video below to see interviews with all of them and a bunch of Dolfans, a mini Solo D music video, and tons of shots of Dolfans taking over MetLife Stadium.
This is also a great time to let you guys know that we are only about 50 tickets away from the most tickets ever sold to a #MetLifeTakeover EVER. We want to break our record of 1250, so if you have been thinking about going, now is the time! This is going to be our best event ever. Phins up!
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.)
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!
This is a very different Miami Dolphins team from the last time we updated our website. The Dolphins have had a full 25% roster overhaul in the short time since we first put #MetLifeTakeover tickets on sale. The team that is suiting up this Sunday vs the Ravens is going to have a lot of new faces and may not be the juggernaut we expect from the Miami Dolphins, but we’ve been through tough seasons once or twice before and I am hopeful that looking back in a few years this will be the best thing to happen to us since we drafted Dan Marino.
The reason we started Dolfans NYC is because football is more fun when you are watching it with other people. The wins are better, but maybe more importantly, the losses are a lot better. You get to commiserate (and perhaps get very drunk) with people who know what you are going through. There aren’t a lot of places where you can make new friends as an adult but I know there are Dolphins fans that I will talk to for the rest of my life because of this club.
10 years ago when we founded Dolfans NYC we expected a few dozen people to walk into our bar Third & Long but by kickoff there was a line out the door. A few years later Third and Long sadly closed and we moved to Slattery’s Midtown Pub and once again on week one we packed the place despite being three times the size of our old home. The #MetLifeTakeover started with 35 people and grew to 70 and then 200 then 750 and it’s averaged over 1000 for the last 5 years. It’s been one hell of a ride and despite the team on the field I am very excited for our 10th season.
To celebrate our 10th season we have a BUNCH of new merch designed by one of our members Jackie who moved upstate and as a going away present made a bunch of stuff for us. You might have seen our 10 Years logo already but you haven’t seen these new shirts. We created a MIAMI NORTH shirt and tank top in the Miami Vice colorway that will look as good in your all white Air Force Ones in NYC as it will walking down South Beach in flip flops. We also have a 10 Years iron on patch for your jerseys and we have two new hats that are in the works.
For one week only (well more like 10 days) this stuff will be available to purchase online. Our regular merch store is closed while we are selling #MetLifeTakeover tickets because it’s impossible for us to deal with both at once, but next Sunday I am going to bring everything I need to ship home from Slattery’s and mail it out the next day. I don’t have time to be shipping constantly, but I can dedicate and afternoon to it. So if you want some of our new merch and you don’t live in the area here’s your chance to get some of our merch. We have our normal Dolfans NYC stuff in the shop as well. And remember, all proceeds go to charity. SHOP HERE.
Speaking of charity, for our 10th anniversary season, our goal is to donate $10,000 to charity and we will be making a donation to a different charity every week of the season. This Sunday we are doing a huge fundraiser for the Jason Taylor Foundation. They sent us a full sized Hall of Fame helmet signed by Jason that we will be raffling. We also have a signed ball that we will be auctioning off at Slattery’s. If you can’t make it to Slattery’s we are selling raffle tickets online as well. If you want a chance to win the helmet send $20 for every 5 tickets to DolfansNYC@gmail.com using PayPal. We will be drawing tickets during the 4th quarter of the Ravens game live on our Instagram so you can watch at home to see if you win.
Lastly, I wanted to mention that after emailing them for months we finally heard back from the Giants about trying to buy group tickets. We don’t have anything set in stone because they have been very slow responding, but it looks like we are going to be able to buy a small block of tickets in the lower level. We will be selling them for $150 which is a lot more than our Jets seats, but at least we get to be near the field for a change. If you don’t have your Giants tickets yet, you might want to hold off for a bit. Feel free to email us (DolfansNYC@gmail.com) to get on our email list when the tickets go on sale. For now, get your Jets tickets here!
Okay, that’s it! Sorry for the longer than normal post, but just so excited for our 10th season of Dolfans NYC! See 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!
As of this morning the #MetLifeTakeover tickets are all sold out! We are talking to the Jets about trying to get a couple more rows in another section close by but we have already sold over 1000 tickets! Even if you don’t get tickets with us everyone is invited to both the tailgate and the pre-party at our bar Slattery’s Midtown Pub. We also partnered with the NFL Experience to get you guys discount tickets with to their Times Square attraction.
Let’s start with the tailgate! The catered tailgate is being offered by Urban Tailgate up until game day, but our discount code only works until tomorrow night so this is your last chance to get the all you can eat and drink tailgate for $65. You can read more about it over on the #MetLifeTakeover FAQ and you can buy your tickets via Urban Tailgate here. The $20 off coupon is “DOLFANSNYC2018” and if you get the cheaper no alcohol option you can still get $10 off using “FINSUP” as the coupon code. And as always you are more than welcome to enjoy the tailgate party with us for free. Just BYO if you want to eat or drink but come party with us. We have a ton of stuff going on including raffles, merch sales, a live taping of Joe Rose & Nat Moore’s “Cup of Joe” and a performance from Solo D.
Speaking of Solo D he is also going to be performing at our Pre-Party at Slattery’s Midtown Pub. The party is going to start early at 6pm so that we can end by 9pm so people can still get some sleep before the #MetLifeTakeover. Slattery’s is at 8 E. 36th St in Manhattan and is walkable from Penn Station, Times Square and a ton of other Subway stops. On top of the Solo D performance we will have merch for sale, raffles and maybe even a live auction if we get a good crowd. We also just redid our Dolfans NYC museum in the back of Slattery’s so make sure you check that out. A lot of work went into that space.
Lastly I want to mention the NFL Experience promotion we are doing. The NFL Experience Times Square is a “football theme park” that features memorabilia, games, photo ops and much more. This article gives a pretty good run down of what you can expect if you visit. They call it “Disney meets the Hall of Fame meets Dave & Busters”. They reached out to us about doing something with us so we figured the #MetLifeTakeover weekend was a perfect opportunity since a bunch of people will be in town for the game. If you want to check it out we have discount tickets available on Friday and Saturday. It’s not too far away from Slattery’s so if you want to stop by before our event Saturday it should be the perfect pre-game to the pre-party. You can use the coupon code “DOLFANSNYC18” to get tickets for just $25 which normally run you $39. Should be a really fun weekend.
Okay, so that’s it! See a lot of you at Slattery’s on Sunday for the first bit of real football in a long, long time! Phins up!
