A's Still Moving to Las Vegas?
The Athletics have been getting plenty of positive headlines over the past few weeks, funnily enough, after they finally started spending money. Weird how that works. The big question remaining for the franchise is how exactly they're going to pay for the $1.75 billion ballpark in Las Vegas, which is currently supposed to include owner John Fisher and family spending over a billion of their own dollars (before overruns) to fund this project.
While Fisher has upped the A's payroll to over $100 million for the first time in franchise history, a projected $70 million of that is coming in the form of revenue sharing. There is a big difference between the ~$35 million in payroll that he's actually paying, and some number that starts in the billions.
Until there is more than a piece of paper saying "we're good for it" that makes the Vegas ballpark a sure thing, these questions will linger.
But beyond the usual question for the franchise, they have also been sending some mixed signals of late. A couple months back, the A's officially dropped "Oakland" from their name, then sent out an email to the media that said that they would like to be addressed as just "Athletics" or "A's," even though they'll be playing their games in West Sacramento.
Given the team's destination in Las Vegas, this made sense.
Yet, they have also been doing some community outreach of late, with some players and manager Mark Kotsay being brought in to the team's temporary city for a basketball game, to make some coffee for the locals, and it turns out, to take some pictures of them in their new A's jerseys with Sacramento patches.
In our Sacramento Erahttps://t.co/qPxlJWK68Z pic.twitter.com/waU1IKWWSO
— Athletics (@Athletics) January 17, 2025
The A's won't have a city designation in their name, won't wear Sacramento across their chest on the road, like they did with Oakland, yet they are going to wear a patch with the Tower Bridge that has Sacramento in the team's font? Why are the A's making so many efforts to appease a city that is meant to be a rest stop for them on their way to Sin City?
Furthermore, why are they taking away the elephant patch that has been on the jerseys since the 1980's to slap this on? Team representatives have said that they want to keep the team's name and colors to continue the history of the storied franchise, and the elephant mascot has been around since 1902, so for all but one single year of the team's existence.
The team has played without the patch in the past, but it has been a staple for decades. If the team is trying to separate themselves from Oakland, that wouldn't be taking the team's history with them, and they'll also be wearing a Rickey Henderson "24" patch this season, so that can't be it.
Why take off the elephant to slap a Sacramento patch on there? That only has the potential to rub (potential) fans in Vegas the wrong way. The elephant would have been more of a "whatever" to a new fan base, and all they would have had to do is explain that the elephant has been with the club for over a century. Rational people would understand.
But a Sacramento patch makes it seem as though the club is trying to create some roots in a place that they're only supposed to be for three or four years before getting to their ultimate destination. Will the Tampa Bay Rays be wearing a Steinbrenner Field patch? No, because it's a temporary solution to the problem of where the team would play its games.
On the other hand, if the A's are planning on flirting with the idea of planting roots in Sacramento long term, then wouldn't it be wise to attempt to bring some of the Oakland fans back into the fold? A Sacramento landing spot isn't ideal, but it's more tolerable for a lot of fans. Getting rid of the elephant in the process though is just not the way to go about it.
While we're on the topic os the A's potentially sticking in Sacramento, the biggest reason that it would make sense is because of the first issue we talked about: financing. Fisher has been searching for investors in the club at an inflated valuation for awhile now, and hasn't seemed to find any, which is why he and his family are on the hook for nearly all of the project.
In Sacramento, his buddy Vivek Ranadivé, owner of the Sacramento Kings, would be a very willing partner since he wants to bring Major League Baseball to his city on a permanent basis. The two could team up and make that happen, with the A's relocation stretching out for even longer as they figure out how a new ballpark would work up north.
Staying would solve a pretty big question for Fisher, and working with Ranadivé would also make it so that he wouldn't have to completely sell the team, just a portion of it.
This would also track with why the team brought out some of its star players for community engagement last week, because it really shouldn't have been to sell tickets. Sutter Health Park holds just over 14,000 fans, and it really shouldn't be that hard to sell out every game in the first year in a new city. So why the outreach? Why making it look as though the club is connected to this city?
These questions don't have answers that are available. Another question would have to be how much of an appetite MLB would have for yet another ballpark project from Fisher after burning two cities. In the coming months, we may get an answer to all of these questions.
Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. He also covers the Stanford Cardinal as they attempt to rebuild numerous programs to prominence.