A's Having a BOGO Sale on Opening Day Tickets While Fans Plan to Boycott Game

A's fans are hoping to take away John Fisher's biggest gate of the season

Outside of the "reverse boycott" games at the Oakland Coliseum last year, Opening Day was the biggest draw that the A's had in 2023 with 26,805 fans watching Kyle Muller go pitch-for-pitch with Shohei Ohtani. For months, A's fans have been planning a boycott of the 2024 season opener in an effort to hurt owner John Fisher in the place he covets the most: his wallet. 

On June 13, as the A's were about to get SB1 passed for their public funding in Nevada, A's fans held the original "reverse boycott" which drew just under 28,000 as the announced attendance. The A's, wanting to look like good community partners, donated the gate revenue from that game, which ended up being a little over $800,000. The fans hope to take the money that would have been spent going to the game, and redirect it to Schools Over Stadiums. They should be set to begin collecting signatures to potentially land a referendum on the ballot in November that would leave the fate of the A's public funding in Vegas up to the people of Nevada. 

Fans will be going to the Coliseum for the boycott, but they're encouraged to BART in and not pay for parking, or essentially hand any money to Fisher. They will also be handing out flags with the infamous "SELL" mantra on them. The hope is to get thousands of people in the parking lot outside of the game waving those flags. 

On Wednesday, the A's countered by sending out an email offering buy one, get one tickets for the opener. The team has a policy to not talk about projected attendance, but based solely off of this promo for a game that usually sells itself, the tickets aren't moving like the team would hope. Maybe Fisher will pull out all the stops and bring in some of his art gallery to showcase to really get those ticket sales up. 

A's fans will be making headlines all season long, just like they did in 2023. The thing is, this was all avoidable. If Fisher had come out and showed his work and his thought process for why he's making the decision to move to Las Vegas, the fans still wouldn't be happy, but they would understand. The way Fisher has chosen to operate has been hastily and without much thought process. When he does speak, he says things like, "It's been worse for me than for you." He's made it easy to root against him. 

All he had to do to be a hero in Oakland was spend some money occasionally, but that was too much to ask.