Give the A’s credit. Halfway into their Northern California farewell tour, they have spotlighted the challenges Sacramento faces as it pursues a Major League Baseball expansion team.
Local sports fans know by heart the attributes that make Sacramento an obvious choice. Market size. Loyal fan base. Great weather.
But those qualities aren’t enough to guarantee success. To land an expansion team, the region must answer two questions that don’t get enough attention in local media:
Is the region affluent enough to support a gold-plated stadium and corporate sponsorships?
Will the Giants let a new team into Northern California?
Baseball learned the hard way about NorCal market share, starting in 1968, when Charlie Finley moved the A’s from Kansas City to Oakland. The A’s won four World Series and died at the box office.
Three years ago, the Giants vetoed plans for a new team in San Jose. Will the Giants be more generous with Sacramento?
I’ve written before how the A’s hurt the River Cats by flooding the market with too many games. In West Sac, the A’s diminished the affordable, down-market pleasures of Triple-A baseball. A hierarchy blossomed, A’s high, Cats low.
When the A’s move to Las Vegas in 2028, the River Cats will struggle to recover. The Cats are damaged goods.
Last year, the A’s mistakenly assumed local fans would pay sucker prices to watch big-league baseball. The A’s sold out just three series—Yankees, Cubs and Giants. They averaged 9,500 attendance in a bandbox that holds 14,000.
This year, the A’s took a smarter approach, selling cheaper tickets the first few months. Attendance ticked up 1,000 per game, aided by better performances. Not that attendance matters.
I learned baseball’s priorities 15 years ago, when I chauffeured a secretive trio of well-dressed Major League Baseball representatives around the Downtown railyards and other potential stadium sites.
Back then I was special assistant to Mayor Kevin Johnson. Kevin emphasized the baseball guys were in town for a hush-hush reconnaissance mission.
Among the trio, the only one I knew was Kevin McClatchy, whose family owned the Bee. McClatchy had recently yielded control of the Pittsburgh Pirates and remained tight with the commissioner’s office.
The baseball guys never said exactly who might move to Sacramento. It was obviously the A’s.
I came armed with facts about the market’s booming population and retail potential, about River Cats and Kings attendance, about beautiful weather.
The baseball guys yawned.
They wanted to know how many suites, corporate sponsorships and premium season packages a big-league team could sell in Sacramento. They wanted names of local rich people, and whether the moneyed class would support a new stadium.
I reminded them this was a government town. I said I could count the seriously wealthy people on one hand. Some would be supportive, some not. McClatchy, who understood Sacramento, nodded.
The baseball guys left. No follow up. It was no coincidence that when the A’s finally landed here, they rented.
The questions the baseball guys asked—sponsorships, premium packages, wealth—find their answers in Vegas. The A’s new home will have just 33,000 seats. Few will be for average fans.
The Vegas ballpark is baseball’s new prototype. A casino is coming next door, making the move a royal flush.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
