Amid much concern about whether baseball players and fans would bake to death once Athletics games are played in sweltering Sacramento starting next season, MLB has announced that the city’s stadium will keep its natural grass for 2025:
“Our shared, primary concern is ensuring the best and safest playing surface for the A’s, River Cats and visiting players. In light of the players’ clear preference for natural grass, and after weighing with the MLBPA the potential risks and benefits of maintaining natural grass versus replacing the playing surface with synthetic turf, all the parties are aligned in moving forward with a natural grass field for Opening Day 2025.”
This makes it sound like the driving force here was the players’ union, which could have filed a grievance over working conditions if it hadn’t been satisfied that Brent Rooker wouldn’t melt into a Brent Rooker–shaped puddle during Sacramento day games on turf. (MLB had previously announced that it would install a “hydration system” to cool the turf, but was never clear about how that would have worked.) To clear that obstacle, MLB seems to have decided it’s cheaper to pay to maintain grass at the stadium, even while the A’s and River Cats both play full schedules that will put a pounding on it.
Who’s going to pay to maintain the grass surface is still an open question, though so was who would have paid for installing turf. River Cats owner Vivek Ranadive has been promised he won’t be stuck with any costs of hosting the A’s, so it looks like this will either be on A’s owner John Fisher’s tab or on the league’s.
A’s fans, meanwhile, will continue to sit in a stadium without even a sun roof, so will likely melt into puddles on their own. They are welcome to file grievances of their own, hahahaha, the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t guarantee customers any right to grievances, so be sure to read the fine print on the back of your ticket as to whether you are releasing the A’s from liability in case you die of heatstroke.
I think the heat on artificial turf angle was overblown. The round concrete stadiums of the 70s were all brutally hot, especially St. Louis. And they were round, with very little breeze. With modern grass management, Sacramento should be able to keep an acceptable field, even with two teams playing on it. Players would probably prefer a ratty grass field to a perfect artificial field. The fans on the other hand, they’re on their own.
The pushback against artificial turf might have been based in part on, “This isn’t the 70’s anymore.” And really, it would’ve been hard to blame the players if that was the case.
“read the fine print on the back of your ticket”
I don’t think tickets exist anymore, much to my chagrin. We have to replace that phrase with: “Read the Terms of Service agreement provided when your digital ticket was purchased”.
Yes, that was meant ironically.
“… Terms of Service agreement provided when your digital ticket was purchased…”
As amended, including after sale, at the sole discretion of the seller or it’s agents etc…
I don’t understand why the Triple A team doesn’t move for a few years. Fresno has a Triple A stadium and was just relegated to Single A.
Also not sure why the heat is an issue for fans. I doubt many Bay Area fans will maintain a connection so the fans that show up are likely to be locals who are used to sitting in the heat to watch River Cats games anyway.
As I understand, Fresno got relegated to Single-A specifically because it’s out of the way for supra-regional AAA travel schedules. And obviously Ranadive does not want to give up any of the RiverCats revenue that he entirely captures, even as he does all this in hopes of securing a purchase option on a major-league team.
Fluctuating minor-league attendance, that might go up or down on the hottest days of the summer, is a local concern. Having a major-league team in this situation is already a national-level embarrassment, and playing to a less-than-full AAA stadium at the height of the season would only compound that. And note that the asking prices for A’s games are substantially more than for RiverCats games, so the casual walk-up market is suddenly imperiled.
We shall see what comes to pass. There is still a possibility that they manage to fill the stadium for 81 games, and MLB leadership is shameless anyway. But I doubt this is the last we hear about discontent from the players’ union.
Fresno lost AAA baseball because MLB’s realignment of the minors allowed MLB teams to choose where they wanted their AAA team, regardless of whether that market previously had a AAA team. The eight western MLB franchises chose other cities for their AAA team, and eastern MLB teams didn’t want to have their AAA team 2,000 miles away.
Ranadive owns the River Cats, and doesn’t want to move them, and neither Fisher nor MLB wants to pay him what it would take to change his mind.
As for the River Cats playing day games, you’re correct that they currently do so, mostly on Sundays. The A’s will need to have more day games thanks to getaway days before trips (all travel in AAA is on Mondays) — any possibly thanks to national TV contracts, though it’s always possible Fox et al. won’t want the air the A’s much anyway.
If they A’s want to play night games on Sunday they will have to forgo they local tv revenue for Sunday home games as ESPN has exclusive rights to the Sunday evening time slot. So 13 games out of 162 would be blacked out if the A’s played evening games on Sunday (which I don’t think would be allowed if one of the teams has a Monday night game back east)
Im annoyed how they say the stadium will seat 14,000. It’s 10,000+ 4,000 SRO. No one will want to sit on a berm in August.
I would guess there will be a couple of months in mid summer when no-one will want to sit in the seats either. In fairness, the A’s aren’t/won’t be the only team with dog-days of summer attendance issues. But I hope they do avg 6,000 attendance or less in their new semi-permanent home.
I feel bad for the players, but then, this isn’t the only utterly incompetent ownership group in professional sports. Sometimes it goes with the territory. And the paychecks.
The A’s playing the 2025 season in a minor league stadium along with the Rays who will be forced into a minor league facility has to be a real embarrassment for MLB.
The Rays have an excuse due to circumstances which they couldn’t control. The A’s have no excuse. The whole A’s Stadium process has been a debacle. I am not holding my breath they will end up in Vegas. The fact they are not rushing a wrecking ball to the Coliseum could be a sign of a fall back if the Vegas deal doesn’t work out. One year in the 100 plus degree heat of Sacramento will have MLB forcing the A’s somewhere else, (Coliseum?), in 2026.
I get that neither team drew a ton of fans but I’m still curious how much it affects game day revenue. If the Rays are playing in a spring training facility for 30-40 games that seems like a significant revenue hit
As someone who worked outside for decades in the Sac area, it’s not that bad. Sunscreen and a good hat (not a baseball cap) and hydrate and you’ll be fine for a couple of hours. A shitty kitchen job is worse in a Sac summer.
“A shitty kitchen job is worse in a Sac summer.” — Of course it is. But folks who live in Sacramento don’t have to go to the ballpark. They don’t have to pay $100 or more for a game ticket and then pay more on top of that for parking and concessions. (Sac Bee article says season tix for good seats will work out to $183 to $244 per game.) They can ignore the game entirely. Or they can watch on TV in their air-conditioned home instead of paying premium prices to sit in a 100-degree stadium with no shade.
I am still hoping the River Cats outdraw the Athletics in Sacramento.
It may seem unlikely, but consider the relative price of tickets as well as the “not our team” nature of the Athletics stay (which, as noted previously, could be for a LOT longer than Fisher and Kaval have suggested).
It’s not impossible. And I will certainly be looking forward to seeing the ticket sales figures… The A’s totalled about 832,000 fans last season in Oakland – and about 75,000 of those came for the “protest” game and the finale. Absent those two games, the A’s averaged about 9300 per home game.
Sorry, that was the 2023 attendance… in 2024 it was 922,000, so the A’s were about 10,500 in avg attendance absent the two big attendance games this season.
If you believe Fisher’s reported attendance figures, that is.
With the A’s scheduled to stay at least 2 years in Sacramento, MLB is probably extra sensitive to not pissing the union off because if the Vegas situation worsens and this turns into a Coyotes 2.0 situation, whoo boy things could get ugly.
I still don’t know why the A’s didn’t settle for Smith’s Ballpark in SLC. With the Bees moving next season, they could’ve had a 15k seat stadium (actual seating too) almost entirely to themselves. They’d have to share with the Utes for one year and even then, college baseball home schedules wrap by May. Plus, SLC is the closest major city to Las Vegas outside of Southern California. Most of all, it seemed like the cheapest and easiest option for John Fisher, and if there’s anything he loves it’s cheap and easy.
I’ve read that the local cable tv deal (which the A’s get to mostly keep) had a huge bearing on choosing Sac over SLC.
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/baseball/2024/as-tv-deal-finances-sacramento-1234774067/
The A’s would have had to start over, in a smaller market (Sac/Central Valley is at least as big as SLC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market)
NBC Sports California picked Sacramento for them. They stood to get $0 in local tv in Reno, SLC or Vegas. Just like they will get zero tv dollars if they move to Vegas in 2028.
The RSN model is nearly dead. MLB will be producing local games for 1/2 the teams and trying to sell it via streaming.
The padres have had 2 seasons without local money, games are produced by MLB and shown on free tv in San Diego, and they got 50,000 subscribers around the “territory”. That might sound good but with an average cost of $100 per season per subscription, that’s only $5 million, about 1/10 of what the old tv deal with Diamond would have paid them
“Just like they will get zero tv dollars if they move to Vegas in 2028.”
How do you know that? The Vegas Golden Knights are televised by Scripps Sports on KMCC Channel 34 in Vegas and several other over-the-air channels in NV/AZ/ID/UT. They are paid for those television rights. Why wouldn’t the A’s be able to get a similar deal? It may indeed be less than what they made with NBC Sports Bay Area, but it’s unlikely to be “zero”.
“The padres have had 2 seasons without local money, games are produced by MLB and shown on free tv in San Diego, and they got 50,000 subscribers around the “territory”. ”
Padres games are not on over-the-air free TV. Games are produced by MLB and air on dedicated channels on DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse, Spectrum and Cox Cable (maybe others as well). The channels have brief pre- and post-games but are largely just the games themselves, with none of the non-live event programming that RSNs often feature.
Just clarifying a few factual errors in that comment.
And here’s another factual error: Broadcast television is NOT “free TV” and never has been!
Padres were actually able to expand their local-TV territory with their pop-up channel. San Diego, Palm Springs, Yuma, Las Vegas, and all of Hawaii.
The golden knights make very little with the switch to scripps. They were dropped from AT&T sports net in the middle of a season. There’s no value in starting a cable station for RSN money in a market as small as Vegas.
The channels the padres are featured on in San Diego don’t pay the team anything. It’s basically a community service. Yes there’s some small advertising dollars, but that’s insignificant compared to what they were supposed to get from Diamond.
The padres had their broadcasts in Las Vegas well before the loss of Diamond/ballys. That’s not new.
The call is coming from inside the house…
Pretty sure the sources here are MLB, the Yankees or Mets
https://nypost.com/2024/10/23/business/oakland-as-shop-stake-in-deal-that-values-team-at-2b-sources/