"Summer of Sell" Reaches Dodger Stadium

Very audible "sell the team" chants were heard in the fifth inning of Tuesday's Oakland A's/Los Angeles Dodgers game

What started as a one-night event in June has turned into an entire movement. When A's fans organized the "reverse boycott" for June 13, it took nearly two months of planning and promoting in order to get everyone on the same page. Now "sell" chants are being organized over a weekend after baseball fans have become familiar with what's going on with the A's efforts to relocate to Las Vegas. 

On Tuesday night, it was Dodger Stadium that erupted into "sell the team" chants in the top of the fifth inning. A week ago it was Oracle Park in San Francisco. For those two fan bases to be pulling in the same direction means that there's a pretty good chance A's owner John Fisher is in the wrong. 

Dodger Stadium joins in on the "Sell The Team" chants in the 5th inning. pic.twitter.com/W2LLL6lsjU

— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) August 2, 2023

Even NBC Sports California tweeted out the chants, which feels like a bold move for the provider that carries the team's games. They could be chasing social media clicks, or they too could be tired of Fisher's antics. Keep in mind, they could be set to lose the A's broadcasts if the team ends up in Las Vegas, so it would make sense for NBC Sports to not be thrilled with what's been going on.

There is another "reverse boycott" planned for this Saturday as the A's take on the Giants in Oakland, and ticket prices have been talked about quite a bit over the past week or so. The cheapest ticket to get in is $44 before taxes and fees. 

Bay Area media personality Damon Bruce said in a video he posted on social media, "Now I'd like to think, just for a moment, that this is an actual sign of worry by the A's and John Fisher. That this is an actual level of concern that fans are expressing themselves so succinctly, that their message is now falling not on deaf ears, but on ears that are beginning to listen to the plight of some fans and the coverage of the "sell the team" chant, the "sell" shirt. It's all been trending up in the last week or two around Major League Baseball. I'd like to think that they're actually afraid that fans showing up to make a difference could scuttle their plans to relocate." 

This movement started as A's fans having one last party before things got really dark, but now there is a sliver of a chance that the original "reverse boycott" was the start of potentially causing enough noise to keep the A's in Oakland. At the very least, the team won't be leaving without a fight. 

John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle reported over the weekend that "low-revenue teams are upset that the A’s are receiving preferential treatment — no relocation fee, for instance — and that high-revenue owners aren’t thrilled that the A’s benefit from increasing revenue sharing but don’t seem to transfer the money into their baseball team, including payroll."

Are those owners upset enough to vote "no" when it's time to decide the A's fate at the relocation vote? Right now, probably not. But the more the fans chant "sell the team" in their stadiums, the harder it will be for Major League Baseball to sell the A's relocation. A's fans have disrupted MLB's narrative that there are no fans in Oakland. Some may even say that they've proven that the problem all along has been John Fisher. 

This entire situation isn't great for the league from a public relations standpoint. The other owners aren't thrilled with John Fisher already, and now he's hurting their overall product. How much longer will they continue to support his efforts--that will keep the team on revenue sharing forever and also not result in a relocation fee to be dispersed among the 29 other owners? How much is too much?