Attendance woes:
The Coliseum will be filled for Tuesday’s freebie, in contrast to sparse paid crowds this season.
The Oakland A’s first homestand of the season brought with it some alarming attendance figures. Twice against Texas, the team drew fewer than 8,000 fans to a stadium that holds more than 40,000 for baseball.
Tuesday, the Coliseum figures to be packed to the brim — because tickets to the game are free, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the team’s first game in Oakland.
“It’s like a huge block party,” A’s president Dave Kaval said. “The Coliseum filled to the rafters, it’s going to be a really fun night.”
The A’s distributed 200,000 tickets for Tuesday’s game and expect around 70,000 fans to show up based on RSVPs. The projected overflow crowd won’t count in terms of official attendance, however, which is based on tickets sold.
You can’t have a sellout without
“In a market like this, with other teams doing really well, with new, sexy things — if you’re a sports fan in the Bay Area, there are so many other options.” Michael Goldman, associate professor of sport management at USF
selling something. And with the meager fan turnout so far this year, Oakland’s totals are certain to be near the bottom of the league again. The A’s have averaged the second-lowest attendance in Major League Baseball the past two seasons, ahead of only the Tampa Bay Rays, at fewer than 19,000 tickets sold per game.
On April 2, the A’s game against the Texas Rangers attracted a paltry 7,416 fans, the team’s smallest crowd since April 3, 2003 — a game that was not originally on the schedule but was added when Oakland’s trip to Japan that year was canceled.
“It was weird, there’s always been poor attendance, but never really quite like that,” said season-ticket holder Kimm Susini, 32, of Martinez. “When everyone was into it, it was hard to tell no one was there — but when it was quiet, it was dead quiet. Like being in an away stadium when the A’s are up.”
The A’s say they aren’t overly concerned about the low attendance. Typically, teams take a season-long view: one down homestand can be due to a number of factors, including school holidays, poor weather and conflicting events. This year’s NCAA men’s basketball title game, for example, was on the night of that A’s smallest crowd in 15 years.
Kaval said that one reason attendance is down is that the A’s have reduced the number of brokers selling A’s tickets in an effort to improve customer service and maintain resale value for season-ticket holders who might need to unload unused seats.
Tuesday’s free game could be another reason for the empty seats. Some fans may figure that’s their one game to attend this month. And a freebie can devalue an existing product, according to Michael Goldman, an associate professor of sport management at the University of San Francisco.
“It gets attention because it’s not something that’s been done before,” Goldman said of the free game. “But price changes are always problematic — if what you’re used to paying is now X minus 50 percent or 100 percent, that can create expectations of what you might be willing to pay in the future.”
Another recent price change might be having a more profound effect. The A’s raised general parking prices at the Coliseum from $20 to $30, a 50 percent increase.
The A’s had not increased parking prices over the previous five years, and as Kaval noted, parking remains $10 for season-ticket holders who have plans for more than eight games. Parking also remains free on Tuesdays unless there is a premium opponent or there is an event at Oracle Arena.
“A lot of people told me they’re not going to go to games except on Tuesdays,” Susini said. “They say parking never should be more than the cost of the ticket.”
For Oakland fans, a bigger concern is the constant roster shuffling. Popular players spend no more than three or four years with the club before being traded for younger, cheaper players, Josh Donaldson and Sonny Gray being among the most notable.
Kaval reiterated the team’s commitment to signing its core group of top players long-term “so they can be here to open the building in 2023, so fans can buy their jerseys and know that they’re going to be around.”
In recent weeks, however, vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane has responded to questions about longterm deals by saying that both parties must have interest to get a multiyear commitment.
Here’s why: A source told The Chronicle that the team has approached third baseman Matt Chapman’s agent, Scott Boras, about beginning talks about a potential multiyear deal but were told that there currently is no interest in such talks.
Boras, the most powerful agent in baseball, might want to point Chapman toward true free agency in six years as a more lucrative proposition than signing away a year or two of free agency and winding up on the market at the age of 31 or 32, the age of players most negatively affected during this past winter’s slow free-agent season.
Yet, retaining top talent will be the only true way to win and keep fans, according to Goldman.
“You see a correlation in all research with team identity and the psychological relationship fans have with the team,” Goldman said. “If that identity deteriorates because the heroes disappear, if fans don’t have points of connection — great players, coaches with big personalities, exciting, inspiring owners, terrific venues — then that psychological relationship decays.”
Winning, of course, helps. After three consecutive last-place finishes, many in the A’s organization believe that putting a successful team on the field is all that’s really needed to win back the fan base.
The A’s venue remains the biggest elephant in the room. The Coliseum, even with new bells and whistles such as this season’s Treehouse party-deck area and the Farm picnic area, is outdated and missing many amenities of newer buildings.
There was excitement last year when Kaval announced the team had identified a site near Laney College for a new ballpark. When the Peralta Community College District board of trustees abruptly ended talks, it was like a gut punch for the team and its fans.
“Fans don’t like uncertainty,” Goldman said. “And in a market like this, with other teams doing really well, with new, sexy things — if you’re a sports fan in the Bay Area, there are so many other options. When time and money is tight, the attention might not be there if the A’s are the third or fourth team on your list.”
Added Susini: “If they keep losing, it’s not going to get better. And if they win, it might not get better, either.”
Kaval, who is renowned for his optimism, would rather point toward celebrations like Tuesday’s. The A’s have winnowed the roughly 200,000 tickets issued into a manageable size of about 70,000, according to Kaval, by asking ticket-holders to RSVP. The capacity of the Coliseum, including standing-room space, is about 66,000.
No chaos is anticipated, but those who show up and are unable to get in will receive tickets to a future game as long as they hold legitimate passes for Tuesday’s game. There will also be plenty of additional staffing and security on hand, similar to that in place for Raiders games, which occasionally draw close to capacity.
“It will be a fun environment, and lot of those guys will get to play in front of a big crowd probably for the first time, but I don’t know if it’s a sustainable business model,” A’s second baseman Jed Lowrie said of the freebie game. “Everyone wants to play in front of a full house, but that’s not the reality all the time.
“There are some very passionate Oakland A’s fans, and the best you can ask for is that those fans show up, and we have a responsibility to put forth our best effort no matter what the attendance is.”