The Oakland Athletics will have a new home next season and it won’t be Las Vegas.
The team reached an agreement to move to Sacramento and play in Sutter Health Park for the 2025-2027 seasons, the team announced Thursday on Twitter.
Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento will host the A’s for the 2025-27 seasons – ahead of the team’s move to Vegas in 2028. pic.twitter.com/KryyjzpLMl
— Oakland A’s (@Athletics) April 4, 2024
The team plans to fully move to Las Vegas by 2028. They have an option to continue playing in Sacramento for 2028, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Thursday.
The A’s plan to move to Sacramento for the 2025-27 seasons, with an option to play there in 2028 as well, the team announced. They will play in Sutter Health Park — just over 10,000 seats, with grass outfield seats to increase capacity to 14,000 — for at least three seasons.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) April 4, 2024
The move is a total slap in the face to the Oakland fanbase, whose relationship with the A’s has grown increasingly hostile in recent months. Fans organized an Opening Day boycott leaving the stadium largely empty for Oakland’s 2024 season debut. (RELATED: Horrifically Run Franchise Might Move To City That Makes Absolutely No Sense)
The team has also, in leaked sales guidance, told employees to shy away from mentioning or emphasizing the city of Oakland at all as near-universally hated owner John Fisher plans to jettison the ball club from its 56-year home.
Fisher has done just about everything possible to sever any good will with the city of Oakland, including revoking a local minor league team’s invitation to play in the Coliseum while the A’s are on the road.
The new stadium has the potential to reach max capacity of 14,000, paling in comparison to the current smallest MLB stadium, Cleveland’s Progressive Field, which can host over 34,000 fans. But the A’s won’t need much room at all if current trends continue. They’re averaging just over 6,400 fans per game as of early April, according to Baseball Reference. And that number is likely taking into account the 13,000+ tickets they sold in their home opener, while ignoring the fact that the majority of those fans didn’t appear to actually enter the stadium as part of their boycott.
For Fisher and the rest of his ownership group, he has to be hoping that a Sacramento move can clear some of the toxicity from the air and help his team initiate a fresh start in Vegas by 2028. But if he keeps running his team with complete disregard for the people who pay to watch them, I doubt he’ll be able to run from the fate of having the worst-run team in the league.