I go through this twice a year, once when I post the photos from our yearly Metlife Takeover event and once months later when I post the recap video so let’s do it again… When I first moved to NYC in 2006 I had no one to watch football with because I don’t spend a lot of time hanging out with people who are into sports, especially with my level of intensity. It took me a couple of years but I finally found a small group of Dolphins fans to watch games with and as it began to grow we decided to launch social media accounts for it to spread the word and Dolfans NYC was born.
Dolfans NYC grew very quickly after that and at some point we started selling t-shirts because people wanted merch. We didn’t want to fight over money and we thought it would be less likely that the Dolphins would sue us if we gave all the money to charity. We also started planning a group trip to the Jets Dolphins game when the Dolphins came to New Jersey every year. One of those years the tickets we bought had two different prices. Instead of charging people different things we just raised the prices of the cheaper seats and gave all that money to charity. The next year we upped the prices on all the tickets and suddenly we were making some real money. We started an official 501(c)3 non-profit and a decade or so later we have donated six figures to different charities.
Our biggest fundraiser remains the Jets vs Dolphins game where we buy hundreds and hundreds of tickets together (we hit 1400 in 2023), charter multiple busses, throw a massive tailgate and of course sell merch. It’s a huge undertaking and one of the most successful things I have ever done. My partner Michelle and I did it for free for years, but these days we take a small cut of the bar sales at Slattery’s Midtown Pub where we throw our watch parties. This way none of the money earmarked for charity goes into paying us. We want people to know if they buy a raffle ticket or a t-shirt of a ticket to the game, it’s all going to something positive.
One of the things we do spend some of that money on that doesn’t go directly to charity is our yearly recap video. Our friend Curtis at Visual Verse Media has been making our recap video for years and they are always so much fun to look back on. I realize that 99% of you guys probably do not give a fuck about any of this, but for the few of you who do, that’w why we have these B-Side posts where I can blog about whatever I want without it taking over the main page.
So yeah the video is down below and if you ever have any interest in coming to a game with us you can join at MetLifeTakeover.com.