Oakland fan woes reaching crisis level
Ex-executive blames owner for league-worst attendance numbers
Those expansive, dark green tarps covering Mount Davis at the Coliseum do more than pay homage to the A's glory days. They help hide part of the most unflattering story during the team's five-plus decades in Oakland.
Besides displaying the names and numbers of the A's greatest players, the tarps exist to provide permanent cover for thousands of the ballpark's empty seats. But it would take a lot more of that vinyl mesh to mask the A's current crisis-level attendance problems.
There's no secret why people aren't showing up to their aging, dilapidated home. It's A's ownership dismantling a playoff-caliber roster in the name of future sustainability, while drastically raising season ticket prices amid an ongoing threat to move to Las Vegas, if it can't get a new stadium at the Port of Oakland. To A's fans, that's three strikes — and all but the team's most imperturbable followers are out.
It's been so bad in Oakland that former team executive Andy Dolich found himself compelled to see firsthand what's happened to the franchise he once helped transform from one with 326 season ticket holders in 1980 into the envy of baseball in the early 1990s.
“A voice was calling. I don't know whose voice it was, other than it said I've got to go,” said Dolich, who may have wished he'd been sent to an Iowa cornfield last month rather than to a Tuesday night A's game against Baltimore. As Dolich sat in the Coliseum among an intimate gathering of just 3,700 fans, he was consumed with pain and anger.
“To see nobody there …,” he said as his voice trailed off. “What
we accomplished as an organization, to see that get washed away now in this Bermuda Triangle to wherever is gutwrenching.”
Even saying the A's are last in attendance among baseball's 30 teams fails to properly illustrate the depth of their issues. But this may help: the A's drew a paltry 13,884 fans throughout their just-completed three-game series against the Twins — and it was a nearly 30 percent improvement over their attendance from their previous threegame series.
So far, nearly half of the A's 20 home games have had crowds of fewer than 5,000 fans. Their tiniest crowd was shameful — the A's drew a major-league low 2,488 fans earlier this month against Tampa Bay. It was their smallest Coliseum crowd in 43 years but, because MLB uses tickets sold rather than tickets used for its attendance figures, the true numbers from their 6-1 loss on May 2 were even uglier.
A Coliseum source told this news organization there were actually only 1,452 fans at the stadium during the A's game on May 2. That 1,452 number is even more stunning when considering nearly twice as many fans showed up the next night in Stockton for the A's Low-A affiliate's home game.
Dolich, a former president for business operations and marketing for the A's, doesn't blame fans for the turmoil at the turnstiles. He said many of the team's issues lead back to reclusive A's owner John Fisher.
“This is all self-inflicted. To me, he doesn't represent what an owner should be about in sports now,” Dolich said. “Has anyone ever heard from him? He's owned the team for 17 years now and it's his prerogative not to speak on behalf of the organization, and to have Lew (Wolff) and now (president) Dave (Kaval) speak for him.
“But even though franchises are privately held organizations, they are public trusts. The fanbase is paying good money for seats, suites, parking, brats and beer. You should be communicating
with them.
“I do find (Fisher's silence) somewhat problematic because he's in such a significant position. You may be the last team that leaves a marketplace where all three pro sports teams will have left Oakland, never to return in our lifetime.”
It wasn't always like this in Oakland. In 1990, the A's had the second-highest attendance in the American League (a franchise-record 2.9 million fans) and the following year they even had the highest payroll in baseball ($33 million). Who knew the Coliseum was once a destination place?
Dolich looks at the A's current marketing efforts and just shakes his head. He sees a confusing ticket campaign that began charging their most loyal customers, season ticket holders, nearly double what they paid a year ago. Then there's the problematic $30 parking price. Then, to spark fan interest recently, the team has undercut those season ticket holders by offering dirt cheap entrance into the park.
“Any time your parking is
five times what a ticket price is, you know that there's no strategy involved,” Dolich said. “Any basic marketer in whatever product your offering knows this. There's so many deals available to the customer now that they get confused. A's tickets are two-for-$10 or $5.10, it's this price on a Wednesday, this price on a weekend.
“The A's are offering deals that are destroying the credibility of their product and it hurts that core group of fans.”
As it stands, the A's are drawing a major leagueworst 8,165 fans per game and are on pace to draw just 661,365 fans this season, which would rival the worst attendance by any MLB team over the past 50 years. Business hasn't been this bleak for the A's since their 1979 team attracted the fewest fans of any MLB team in nearly 70 years — a shockingly low 306,000 fans came to the Coliseum that year.
“Clearly to me, as an emotional observer, someone who spent 14 years trying to build the brand in Oakland, this is your fans telling you how they feel by not buying your product,”
Dolich said.
A's pitcher Paul Blackburn, who used to come to games at the Coliseum as a youngster growing up in Oakley, is sympathetic to what Oakland fans are feeling.
“I guess seeing it from a fan's perspective, and I'm kind of speaking from the heart a little bit, I understand it's tough,” Blackburn said recently. “We've had a lot of great players over the last four to five years when I've been here and to see those guys leave from a fan perspective, I get it.”
To be fair, the A's have a valid claim that their crumbling and unattractive, 56-year-old stadium is quite a deterrent to fans as well as the team's future.
“The (new) ballpark is the key to having a larger payroll so we can compete more effectively with bigger market clubs, have a better fan experience and retain players,” Kaval recently told this organization.
The A's and their fans will have an answer to the viability of a new stadium at Howard Terminal on June 30. That's when the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development
Commission votes whether or not to approve the A's request to use 56 acres of port-designed property for their $12 billion ballpark project.
Interestingly enough, Fisher and the A's may have already received a sign that much better days are ahead. To believe that though, you'd also have to believe in divine intervention.
It turns out the 1,452 fans who made their way into the Coliseum last month may have accomplished more than setting a record for attendance futility. Together, those 1,452 might have delivered an omen.
According to numerology, there are Angel numbers, which exist to help people deal with troubling times in their lives. Numerologists insist a series of random numbers can hold a spiritual significance. It's like a fortune cookie from the spiritual realm.
You may not believe what message Angel number 1452 sends to those in need.
“You are doing what you need to do to make sure that you create a positive future for yourself.”
Maybe the A's will be vindicated, after all?