A's, Chicago Cubs Opener Sold Out
The Athletics announced today that their home opener against the Chicago Cubs is a sellout. This will be back-to-back games for the A's that will be played in front of a capacity crowd, though the atmosphere may be quite different in each.
The final home game of the 2024 season was also the team's farewell from Oakland in front of a crowd of 46,889. The Sacramento home opener is sold out, but has a capacity just over 14,000 due to it being a minor-league facility.
The team also mentioned in a press release that for all 81 home games, including the opener against the Cubs, that there will be 250 lawn seats set aside for day-of-game purchases at $25 per ticket. They will be sharing more details on those seats as the season gets closer.
According to the team, "more than 74,000 people registered for the opportunity to purchase tickets for the first Major League Baseball game in the Sacramento region. Those selected for the purchase opportunity began to be notified Tuesday morning, and tickets were sold out by the evening."
Along with the home opener tickets, the July 4th weekend series against the San Francisco Giants also had tickets go on sale early as part of a "ticket purchase opportunity" that fans signed up for at the same time as the Cubs series. There was no mention of that series being sold out, so we reached out to the A's for confirmation one way or the other and have not heard back at the time of publishing. Presumably, there are still tickets available for that series.
There is no denying that excitement for the A's in the region at the very least exists, and could be quite high. The trick for the A's as they navigate the next three or four seasons will be maintaining that level of excitement to make those tickets hard to come by.
Since there are just over 10,000 fixed seats and a couple thousand lawn seats, there will already be scarcity in terms of seeing an MLB game, but a limited supply of something doesn't matter if there's no demand for the product.
If they're able to keep that excitement going, the A's could be able to charge more for tickets in future seasons based on simple economics.
Manfred in Sacramento
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred made a visit to Sutter Health Park on Wednesday to see the progress that has been made to the facilities. Devin Trubey of ABC10 in Sacramento caught Manfred and A's owner John Fisher preparing to go inside.
BREAKING: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and Athletics owner John Fisher are touring Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. The new home of the A’s. We saw them enter the club house under construction and walk the field. The A’s announced a sellout for the home opener on March 31st pic.twitter.com/QLUBovpqZX
— Devin Trubey (@DevinTrubeyTV) January 29, 2025
This was Manfred's first visit to Sacramento to see the park since the A's announced their intention to play the 2025-27 seasons there.
We also reported two weeks ago on social media that the Sacramento River Cats had to relocate one of their home series to a road series in Tacoma (against Tacoma) to accommodate a planned resurfacing of the playing field at Sutter Health Park. We'll have to keep an eye on the two team's relationship in the coming years if this becomes a yearly habit.
The Sacramento River Cats are going to play as the home team in Tacoma for their series against Tacoma from June 10-15 to accommodate a planned resurfacing of the field at Sutter Health Park.
— Jason Burke (@ByJasonB) January 17, 2025
Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. He also covers the Stanford Cardinal as they attempt to rebuild numerous programs to prominence.