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“They Want Nothing to do with Oakland”: Lack of Investment from Ownership leads to Alienation of Athletics Fanbase

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Bryan Johanson, co-founder of ‘Baseball’s Last Dive Bar,’ sits in right field of the Oakland Coliseum during the Athletics’ final season in Oakland. Johanson said he is frustrated with the team’s lack of spending. Photo courtesy of Bryan Johanson

57 years; 4,493 games; 21 playoff appearances; 6 American League Pennants; 4 World Championships; 16 Hall of Famers and a lot more history ripped away from the city of Oakland.

That is what multiple fans of the Oakland Athletics (A’s) said is how they feel about their former favorite team relocating to Las Vegas after over 50 years in Northern California.

After nearly 60 years in Oakland, the Athletics have started their relocation process as they hope to be playing games in Las Vegas by 2028. Many people said they blame owner John Fisher’s greed and lack of investment into the team for causing this avoidable and unnecessary situation.

“I spent all this time in my life, all this money, and to basically be told, ‘Yeah, you know what? It wasn’t enough, we’re taking the team away,’ that’s one of the biggest betrayals possible,” said Dennis Biles, board member of the Oakland 68’s, an Athletics’ fan group. “So why would I want to support this entity that basically said, ‘What you gave us for so long, what you gave us, this huge part of your life, it’s not enough.’”

The Athletics are now the third professional sports team to leave Oakland, as the Golden State Warriors left for San Francisco in 2019 and the Raiders left for Las Vegas in 2020, according to Yahoo Sports. Additionally, ahead of the 2025 season, the team removed Oakland from their official name, so their new official name is just the ‘Athletics.’

Lack of On-Field Investment

The common theme among supporters was the fact so many fans stuck by the Athletics despite putting up with a lack of investment from Fisher — yet the reward for all their troubles was having their favorite team ripped away, multiple sources said.

Through Fisher’s tenure as owner, multiple sources said the Athletics have become the farm system for the rest of the MLB with their lack of investment into the team. Since Fisher became owner in 2005, the Athletics have had a reputation of developing talent but then trading away players before they reach free agency because the players became too expensive to keep.

“The loudest ways you speak [are] with your wallet, with your ballot or with a gun,” Biles said. “I can’t vote them out; I’m not going to shoot anyone, so I’ll say, ‘you’re not getting my money.’”

From 2009 until the end of the 2024 season, the longest contract given to any player by the Athletics was four years, according to Baseball Prospectus. Throughout this period, every other MLB team has given a contract of at least five years, and there are currently 82 contracts in the MLB of at least five years, according to Spotrac.

Notable players the Athletics have traded or have left during free agency throughout Fisher’s tenure include third baseman Josh Donaldson — who won AL MVP the year after he was traded, starting pitcher Barry Zito, starting pitcher Sonny Gray, third baseman Matt Chapman and first baseman Matt Olson, according to Baseball Reference.

“If that’s what you’re doing, how motivated are you to go to a ballpark?” said Zachary Luben, former lifelong A’s fan. “Because you’re just going to root for players that you know in a year or two are going to be gone, and you’re not recruiting. It wasn’t like we were signing free agents to get excited about.”

The Athletics’ most recent run of success was from 2018-2020 where they had three consecutive playoff berths — winning 97 games in 2018 and 2019 and a division title in 2020, according to Baseball Reference. Despite their regular season success, the A’s only spent $73.9 million in Major League Free Agent contracts between the three offseasons — none worth more than two years.

During those three offseasons, there were 14 contracts given out by MLB teams worth more than $76.65 million, according to Spotrac.

The A’s went 86-76 in 2021 and missed the playoffs by six games, according to Baseball Reference. Afterward, the team went into a rebuild, trading away Olson, Chapman, catcher Sean Murphy and starting pitchers Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas and Chris Bassitt. The Athletics have since had a combined record of 179-307 from 2022-2024.

“That team [2018-2021 Athletics] was dedicated to winning and we didn’t feel like the owner cared,” Chapman, who now plays for the San Francisco Giants, said in an interview with the SF Chronicle this past August.

During the 2024-25 offseason, the A’s signed starting pitcher Luis Severino to a three year $67 million contract, which was the largest in team history, according to CBS Sports. Additionally, they extended designated hitter Brent Rooker to a five year $60 million contract and outfielder Lawrence Butler to a seven year $65.5 million contract, according to MLB Trade Rumors.

Despite this increase in payroll, the Athletics’ 2025 payroll ranks 27th out of 30, according to Spotrac. Despite Severino’s $67 million contract being the largest in franchise/team history, there are 99 other contracts in the league worth more. Severino’s three year deal is the smallest contract to be considered the largest for a team in MLB history, according to MLB.

“You’ve never had [a] $100 million player,” said Bryan Johanson, founder of the Athletics’ fan group ‘Baseball’s Last Dive Bar’. “And then he [John Fisher] completely changed the narrative to where [we’ve become] the laughing stock of the league.”

Since 2011, the Athletics have been in the bottom 10 in the league in luxury tax player payroll, according to Spotrac.

Teams who have small payrolls often don’t have success in the postseason. Since the Wild Card Era — 1995 and onwards — 27 of the past 30 World Series champions have been in the top half of payroll and 21 have been in the top ten, according to Baseball America. Since 2005, the A’s have made the playoffs seven times and won two playoff series — the ALDS in 2006 and AL Wild Card Series in 2020, according to Baseball Reference.

“Schott and Hoffman introduced Moneyball — that has always stuck with the team, and it’s just been an excuse to not ever spend any money,” Johanson said. “And I know that that system is praised and all this, but how many championships has Moneyball won?”

Dennis Biles, board member of the Oakland 68’s, sits in left field at the Oakland Coliseum in front of a ‘Vegas Beware’ sign. Biles said he will no longer support the team. Photo courtesy of Dennis Biles

Furthermore, the A’s generated $241 million in 2023 and $257 in 2024, dedicating 34.9% and 43.4% of that revenue to their tax payroll, according to Sports Illustrated. These percentages rank 29th and 19th in the MLB, respectively.

Despite the A’s lack of spending, the Oakland-San Francisco market generally ranks within the top ten markets across the country, according to multiple sources such as Television Index and Sports Media Watch. In contrast, Las Vegas’ market is ranked around 40th and would put the A’s in a smaller market than over 20 MLB teams.

“It was just the decision not to spend the money on your product, the most important product, your team,” Former A’s Executive Andy Dolich said — who worked for the A’s from 1980-1995. “And then [the] most significant secondary product, your venue and fan experience.”

Lack of Investment in the Coliseum

The way Fisher is running the Athletics is in stark contrast to how former Athletics owner Walter Haas Jr. ran the team from 1980-1995, multiple sources said. Under Haas, the Athletics were committed to creating a well-run fan experience that went beyond the talent of the team on the field.

A’s ownership didn’t just fail to invest in the team on the field — multiple sources said the Oakland Coliseum or the overall fan experience had not been upgraded throughout Fisher’s tenure as owner. During Fisher’s tenure, the Coliseum has routinely been ranked as one of, if not the, worst stadiums in baseball, by sources such as USA Today or Sports Illustrated.

“Fisher, I think by design, wouldn’t make any improvements so he could constantly talk about how the Coliseum was falling apart,” Dolich said.

Haas though, multiple sources said the team was dedicated to a great overall fan experience that went beyond the team on the field.

Dolich said this was accomplished in a number of different ways such as: marketing the Athletics to all of Northern California instead of just Oakland, promotions such as letting fans run the bases after the game or sit on the field for a firework show, maintaining a strong relationship with the city and Alameda county and always keeping the Coliseum up to date.

“It was a clean facility, and we reached out to fans,” Dolich said. “We had a number of community involved programs over a 10 year period. Each year, we built or rehabilitated a new little league field right throughout the marketplace. We had players going out and [making] speaking appearances. We made sure that our bathrooms were the cleanest bathrooms around, and we always had a major marketing type of program that fans could identify.”

Athletics fans chant “sell the team” at the reverse boycott game June 13, 2023 against the Tampa Bay Rays at the Oakland Coliseum. Despite protest from fans, there has been no indication from Fisher he is willing to sell the team.

Even beyond the stadium itself, Biles said the Athletics used to pay for a AAA truck to hang around the Coliseum and help people with car troubles such as a flat tire and needing a tow truck — but the A’s no longer have the truck anymore, as it was another expense to them.

While all of this is going on, there is another MLB team who is accessible to people that want to enjoy a baseball game — the Giants — whose home stadium is around 16 miles from the Coliseum and has had higher attendance numbers every year of Fisher’s tenure in Oakland, according to Baseball Reference.

“To the casual observer — someone who goes by maybe two or three ball games a year — they’re gonna see that and be like, ‘Bro, I’m gonna go to the Giants’ game because they have a new stadium, and they actually spend money on the roster,’” Biles said.

The Athletics played their final game in the Oakland Coliseum on Sept. 26, in a game where they beat the Texas Rangers 3-2. Johanson, who said he was at their entire final home stand along with many other games that year, described attending games at the Coliseum during its final season as reliving the same funeral of a family member 81 times and having to experience the emotions that come with a funeral each time.

Additionally, he said it also felt like the family member whose funeral it was, the Oakland Athletics, was killed by another family member: Fisher.

“The final home stand — that pit in your stomach’s just getting bigger and bigger, that knot in your throat is getting bigger and bigger till you get to that last game,” Johanson said. “And then finally, that last game, from pitch number one to the last pitch of that game, that casket was slowly closing.”

Furthermore, Johanson said it saddens him that future fans won’t be able to experience Oakland Athletics baseball.

“It just sucks because I wanted my son to grow up just like I grew up going to the Oakland Coliseum,” Johanson said. “Watching games, going to a new stadium, and having that, but that was all taken away from us and so it’s tough. It’s going [to] take a while to really, constantly, be able to think about the good times.”

Another contrast between Fisher and Haas, multiple sources said, was their openness to the media and community. During Haas’ tenure, Dolich said Haas and other members of the organization’s management were well known to the community due to their involvement with UC Berkeley. Additionally, they were open to the media and believed in three key elements for the organization: teamwork, leadership and trust.

Meanwhile, Johanson said Fisher hasn’t been open to the media. He’s only done a handful of interviews on the subject — including one where he told a group of protestors “it’s been worse for me than for you,” according to Sports Illustrated.

“They [Haas ownership] were very open to the media,” Dolich said. “And then, myself, I was a spokesperson on the business marketing side, and Billy Martin would be on the cover of magazines and John Fisher never really said what he wanted the goal and objective to be.”

The A’s efforts to find a new ballpark to play in goes back long before the team was looking into Vegas, as the team has made numerous efforts to build a new ballpark in the bay area, according to CBS. They’ve played in the Coliseum since the A’s first season in Oakland in 1968, but the team has spent the past 20 years attempting to build a new stadium.

Despite the Coliseum’s age, there are four current MLB stadiums older than it: Fenway Park built in 1912, Wrigley Field built in 1914, Dodger Stadium built in 1962 and Angel Stadium built in 1966, according to MLB. All of which have undegone renovations to keep them up to date.

“The thought was always, ‘let’s build a new shiny object and or move to a more desirable location,’” Former A’s Executive Steve Pastorino said. “So I don’t think renovation was ever taken very seriously. There were some conversations, but not many.”

As the Athletics wait for their stadium to be built in Las Vegas, the team will play at the minor league ballpark Sutter Health Park in Sacramento from 2025-2027, according to the MLB. Sutter Health Park is also the home ballpark of the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate the Sacramento River Cats.

The A’s played their first game at Sutter Health Park on March 31, in a game where they lost to the Cubs 18-3. After the sixth inning, fans started to chant “sell the team” throughout the stadium — directed at Fisher, according to CBS Sports.

“I think it’s so stupid we have to play at a Triple-A stadium when they have maybe not a perfectly good ballpark in Oakland, but a big-league ballpark in Oakland,” Ryan Brasier, Chicago Cubs relief pitcher, said in an interview with USA Today. “I would much rather play in Oakland than Sacramento, but I guess it doesn’t really matter what we want.”

Leaving Oakland Behind

As a result of no longer supporting the A’s, multiple sources said they’ve either thrown out or will no longer wear their Athletics memorabilia.

“Being an A’s fan really became about being an Oakland A’s fan,” Luben said. “But what they’ve done is now that they’ve left, right, you don’t have any homegrown players there that you care to follow, because they’ve all been traded and I’ve lost the regional part of being the pride of them being in Oakland.”

Now that the team has left Oakland and has started playing games elsewhere, Johanson said since the team isn’t rebranding, it feels as if the family member has been resurrected and lives their life without recollection of the past — in this instance as if Oakland never happened.

Teams rebranding after moving is common, as examples include: The first Washington Senators becoming the Minnesota Twins, the second Washington Senators becoming the Texas Rangers, the Saint Louis Browns becoming the Baltimore Orioles, the Seattle Pilots becoming the Milwaukee Brewers and the Montreal Expos becoming the Washington Nationals, according to MLB.

“They want nothing to do with Oakland, the history of Oakland, yet they want to keep the colors and the team name, like s— doesn’t work like that,” Johanson said. “You can’t sit there and denounce an entire 57 years’ worth of history and not want nothing to do with it.”

Ahead of the 2017 season, The A’s hired Dave Kaval as their president who then introduced the ‘Rooted in Oakland’ advertising campaign for the A’s, intended to show the organization’s commitment to Oakland, according to MLB.

Additionally, Pastorino said Kaval told the organization he “gets things done, gets stadiums built” and the worst day of his life was when the Cleveland Browns of the NFL left Cleveland, while also pledging the A’s would never leave.

During Fisher and Kaval’s tenure, the organization made attempts to build a new ballpark in multiple places such as San Jose, Laney College and Jack London Square — all of which fell through for various reasons, multiple sources said. The closest the A’s came was on the Howard Terminal stadium in Jack London Square, but after that fell through in 2023, the relocation to Las Vegas was set in motion.

“Kaval made promises, said things to us internally, said things externally to the public, that at the end of the day he couldn’t deliver on,” Pastorino said. “And I felt that the entire A’s funding package and plan for Las Vegas, you could not trust the piece of paper it was written on because of how Kaval had misled so many people for so many years.”

The A’s new stadium will be a domed stadium built at the south end of the Vegas Strip and will have around 33,000 seats with the expectation they’ll start playing games there in 2028, according to USA Today. This new stadium will cost roughly $1.75 billion to build, with Nevada taxpayers paying for over $300 million of it.

At a June 7, 2023 meeting about SB1, the Las Vegas MLB stadium funding bill worth $350 million, Pastorino said the only time Kaval spoke was when he was asked if he would commit to the A’s paying an entertainment tax. Kaval repeatedly dodged the question — a stark contrast to his “things get done” attitude when he was hired.

“The whole way that Howard Terminal fell apart at the very last minute; the way that the A’s had picked a different stadium site in Vegas that lasted like three days, because the backlash was so strong that it was the worst possible place to put a stadium,” Pastorino said. “The A’s pivoted quickly to the Valley’s thing that I just felt like they were making up answers minute to minute to come up with answers that the legislature could stomach voting yes on a financial package.”

Leaving Behind a Rivalry

Another aspect of the A’s leaving is the MLB will no longer have the rivalry between the Athletics and Giants — often referred to as ‘The Battle of the Bay’ or the ‘Bay Bridge Series.’ Starting in 2018, whichever team won the season series against the other would be rewarded with the Tom Pellack Memorial Bridge Trophy, which was made of steel from the original bay bridge, according to MLB.

The most famous moment between the Giants and the A’s is when the two teams faced off against each other in the 1989 World Series — with Oakland sweeping the series 4-0, according to Baseball Reference. The most memorable part of this series was a 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit Northern California roughly 30 minutes before game 3 was supposed to start, postponing the game and giving the series the nickname of ‘The Earthquake Series,’ according to History.

“I hated the Giants, but I never wish any ill will on the Giants and I always liked playing them, because it was always cool to be like, ‘Yeah, we got to get a radical rival that’s right across the bridge,’” Biles said. “It brings the region together; it’s fun as hell so I always look for those games, so to lose that is it’s just another dagger in the heart.”

Another point of anger Biles said was how Fisher is relocating the A’s despite playing a role in keeping the Giants in San Francisco many years earlier. In the early 1990s, then Giants owner Bob Lurie couldn’t get taxpayers to fund a new stadium. He decided to sell the team in 1992 to a new ownership group for $110 million that would cause the team to relocate to Tampa Bay, according to McCovey Chronicles.

Then San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan wanted the team to stay, so he helped organize a group of San Francisco led businessmen headed by real estate magnate Walter Shorenstein, but included Fisher, to buy the team, according to the Society for American Baseball Research. Fisher was a Giants fan who was worried about the rumors of them leaving and told his dad — who was also a part of the group — they should help put the deal together, according to SF Gate.

“We get this whole song and dance about how they’re investing in the community, and they really care and come spend their money with us,” Biles said. “But when it really came down to it, he could have stepped aside and did the same thing he did 30 years ago by stepping up to keep the Giants in town. He could have kept the A’s in town by saying, ‘hey, you know what? I’ll do the right thing. I can’t get it done here, so I’ll sell and let somebody else get it done.’”

The Athletics’ relocation also means the San Francisco and Oakland area will become a one team market for the first time since 1958, according to Baseball Reference.

“You’re in Sacramento, but you ain’t here, and still, an hour and 45 minutes or two hours, and you’ve created a different platform for the A’s,” Dolich said. “You’re not our competitor anymore in the market, and you’re surely not our competitor playing incredibly wonderful, spectacular, competitive baseball.”

Disconnect Between Team and Fans

In the face of protests by fans, the Athletics have disabled comments on their social media accounts since January 2024. Scrolling back to before they started disabling comments, each comment section — regardless of the topic of the post — was consisted of fans expressing their displeasure for Fisher and asking for the team to be sold.

Athletics fans voicing their displeasure in the comments section of the team’s Instagram before the organization disabled comments on their social media. Comments have been disabled since January 2024. Photo by Tony Gleason

What has caused the alienation of the fan base seems to be a disconnect between ownership and fans, Pastorino said. When working for the A’s, Pastorino lived on the bay side of the hills in El Cerrito and Hayward, Calif., while most other executives lived on the other side of the hill in wealthier communities and far away from the fanbase.

“I just felt that lots of people — Dave Kaval included — would get into their Teslas and drive to their gated communities, and that’s not what Oakland is at all,” Pastorino said.

Early on in his tenure with the Athletics, Pastorino said there was a ‘Save Oakland’ sports rally going on to keep the A’s, Warriors and Raiders in Oakland. Pastorino had asked the Athletics who they were sending to the rally and was told they have no reason to go as it doesn’t concern them.

While Pastorino said he was allowed to attend the rally, he said the organization was confused as to why he would want to spend his time interacting with the fans and what there was to gain from it.

“I got to know the A’s community in a way that I don’t think most of my predecessors had been allowed to,” Pastorino said. “They were basically told, ‘Sell the suites, sell the signs. The corporate clients are in San Francisco and Silicon Valley,’ or whatever, and fans may come and fans may go, but like, it was more of a corporate thing.”

Thus, the actions of Fisher and the A’s organization have ended a twenty-year-long battle by the team to find a new home stadium for the 9-time World Series Champion club. Come 2028, Fisher hopes the Las Vegas Athletics will be the next big storyline in baseball.

Only the future will tell how the club will fare in a different city, but it shouldn’t be forgotten what this organization put a loyal fan base through for many years.

“What are you hoping to attain in Las Vegas that you couldn’t obtain in Oakland?” Dolich said. “How do you leave this diverse city, with [an] incredible history of 57 years, and go to a place that’s already crowded with entertainment?”

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Contact Tony Gleason on Twitter (@tony__gleason) or via email: anthony.gleason@pepperdine.edu