OAKLAND – The A’s days in Oakland are numbered, as far as Reggie Jackson is concerned.
Jackson, who at one point wanted to purchase the A’s from former owners Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann, believes the team will have no choice but to vacate the East Bay in the coming years because of low revenue issues created by their decaying 55-year-old stadium.
“No, they’re not going to have a team here. You can’t play with three, four, five six thousand people in the stands,” Jackson said Sunday at the Coliseum before the A’s held a celebration for the 1973 World Series championship team. “You have no revenues here. What’s the signage look like? You’ve got to have revenue.”
The A’s, prior to their series finale with the New York Mets, had an average home attendance of 11,580 in eight home games, the lowest in Major League Baseball.
The A’s averaged 9,973 per game last season after the organization hiked season ticket prices and gutted the roster, trading or letting walk several of its best players that were set for dramatic pay increases.
“You’ve got to have players on your team making $20-$30 million a year if you’re going to compete and contend,” Jackson said. “You can’t do that here.”
Jackson also offered a gloomy outlook on local government’s ability to reach an agreement with the A’s and develop a waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal near Jack London Square. Since November 2018, the A’s have eyed the property for a new $1 billion ballpark and another $12 billion in private investment for residential and commercial space in the neighborhood.
The A’s have also scouted sites for a possible new domed stadium in Las Vegas, with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred saying in February that team owner John Fisher had focused on the city as the new home for his franchise.
The A’s have played at the Coliseum since 1968 and their lease at the stadium expires after the 2024 season.
“Nothing’s happening. I’m very disappointed. I’d love to see the team stay here,” Jackson said. “But I don’t care who you are. You can’t lose $100 million a year. Can’t lose $50 (million). You can’t do that. You can do it once in a while, do it for two to three years.
“You’re not going to be a billionaire long as you keep losing $100 (million) a year.”
Last month, a Forbes report, which was later corrected, said the A’s generated $212 million in revenue in 2022, last in all of baseball, with a profit of $29 million, which ranked 16th out of the 30 MLB teams.
The A’s, per Spotrac, have a total payroll this season of just over $58 million, last among all 30 MLB teams. Their opponent this weekend, the New York Mets, lead baseball with a total payroll of $345 million.
Last month, Jackson said on “The Howard Stern Show” that he had the funding place to purchase the A’s from Schott and Hofmann before the team was sold to Fisher and then-partner Lew Wolff for $180 million in 2005.
Jackson told Stern he wrote then-commissioner Bud Selig, saying that he and his group, which he said included Bill Gates, were willing to “pay $25 million more than any bid that you get.” But the agreement to sell the franchise to Wolff and Fisher was already nearing completion.
“It’s too bad for the team, the city, me, and the game,” Jackson said. “To have a minority involved would have been tremendous. To have me on this team, the city would have rallied around it and been supportive and jumping for joy. There would have been a groundswell.
“I made a mistake by not talking to the people that owned the team because I had the money,” Jackson added. “By the time I talked to Hofmann, the deal was already done with Wolff. Ken Hofmann said to me, ‘Reggie, it’s tough to get in the game of baseball, it’s harder to get out. Those were the words of Ken Hofmann. He was the guy that I talked to. It broke my heart.”
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