Oakland fans want a 'last hurrah' with A's, but don't want to give money to their owner. Here's how we're doing it

By Jeremy C. Owens

A's fans plan a tailgate protest, road trips to other stadiums and 'John Fisher offsets' as they face the dilemma of conflicting goals

When the Athletics take the field on Thursday for the last Opening Day game currently scheduled in Oakland, Calif., more fans are expected to stay in the parking lot than actually enter the stadium.

The hope is that a packed parking lot outside the mostly empty Oakland Coliseum sends a message to the rest of the world: A's fans are here and willing to support a Major League Baseball franchise. But we refuse to support the franchise's owner, billionaire Gap Inc. (GPS) heir John Fisher, who is seeking to move the A's to Las Vegas.

The A's moved to Oakland in 1968, and created generations of fans just as colorful as their green-and-gold uniforms. As the team is being ripped away from them despite viable stadium plans in Oakland, that creativity has produced historic grassroots efforts. A "Reverse Boycott" last summer produced a packed crowd at the Coliseum on a random Tuesday night, and led to a green "SELL" T-shirt landing in the Baseball Hall of Fame as evidence of fan history.

"We raised over $48,000 to give away 'SELL' shirts for that reverse boycott game, the first fully funded fan giveaway," said Jorge Leon, president of the Oakland 68s nonprofit supporters group. "We're just shattering records out here."

The sight of thousands of fans chanting "Sell the team" in hopes that Fisher would sell to an owner who would keep the A's in Oakland produced unprecedented solidarity. At Major League Baseball stadiums across the country, fans joined in the chant when the A's came to town, even in rival teams' cities.

"No fan base has ever done that. No fan base has ever done a reverse boycott. No fanbase has ever had their their archrival, nemesis from a fan standpoint, sitting there saying, 'Sell the team' in their own stadium," said Bryan Johansen, co-founder of the Last Dive Bar, a clothing company.

Johansen's Last Dive Bar business and Leon's Oakland 68s are the backbone of the fan movement in Oakland - literally the dudes from the left- and right-field bleachers coming together to try to save their team. For a sequel to the reverse boycott, they are planning for the "Summer of Boycott." It started with a February festival organized by the group that drew thousands to downtown Oakland, while the A's planned a party in Las Vegas instead. And next comes the tailgate protest, which Johansen expects could have twice as many people as the game itself.

"I'm hoping for 15,000 to 20,000 [people] in the parking lot and like less than 10,000 in the stadium," said Johansen earlier this week, as plans were still being made for the event.

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But the most fascinating part of the Summer of Boycott will come after Opening Day. While other events are still being planned, most fans are not fully boycotting the potential last season for the A's in Oakland. Even Johansen plans to attend Friday night's game against the Cleveland Guardians, which now employ former A's outfielder Ramon Laureano, the all-time favorite player for both him and his 7-year-old son.

Instead, A's fans seek a middle ground: Boycott loudly to embarrass Fisher and MLB, while attending games in ways that won't benefit the owner. And that could produce a pathway to answering a tough question that is becoming more common: What do you do when you want a product, but don't want to support the only person selling it?

"In psychological terms, that's dissonance," said Kevin Lane Keller, marketing professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. "It's classic dissonance because of the fact that these two things don't go together - I love one, I hate the other, so what do I do?"

As I discussed this dissonance with others, several examples came up, but one was most prominent. Many with whom I spoke brought up a desire to own a Tesla Inc. (TSLA) electric car, but did not want to support the company's chief executive, Elon Musk.

June Cotte, the Kraft professor of marketing at the Ivey Business School at Western University in Canada, put a name to this dilemma for me. She said that consumer researchers call it "goal conflict."

"You want the benefits, but you don't want to reward the company or the the sponsor. So that's why there's a conflict between your goals for your own enjoyment, or how you wanna spend your time, or the kind of car you wanna drive, and your goal for your ethical dimensions," Cotte, the co-editor of the Journal of Consumer Research, told me in an interview.

"When consumers face this kind of goal conflict, they react in a couple of ways," she said. "One is, they could just ignore the situation entirely. So they just stop purchasing, or they just don't go because they they don't want to create that conflict. And so that in the end result that's out of sight out of mind, basically. Another way is what's called in the literature as 'willful ignorance.' So the idea that we just don't ask, don't tell."

But A's fans are trying to split the difference between a hard boycott and willful ignorance of what Fisher is doing to them. That's what makes this "boycott" so fascinating, but also very difficult.

I know personally, because I have been dealing with it for more than a year. I have regularly attended A's games since I moved to Oakland in 2000, but was ready to never enter the Coliseum again after Fisher announced his intention to move. But as I recounted on this week's On Watch by MarketWatch podcast, my son's love for baseball games - and my love for him - led to me attending more than a dozen games last season.

I worked hard to try to avoid giving money to Fisher while going to those games, though. I mostly bought tickets on the secondary market from sites like SeatGeek and StubHub - there were plenty for sale at cheap prices because Fisher waited until a few weeks into last season to announce his intentions, too late for season-ticket holders to cancel their purchases. I also managed to score free tickets to four games in a row that I attended in the middle of summer, and brought in food from outside restaurants instead of buying hot dogs at the stadium.

As the 2024 season begins, I wonder if there will be as many secondhand tickets, though. Season-ticket holders were able to cancel their renewals before this season. So I spent a while discussing this with the real experts - the A's fans who are also trying to avoid paying Fisher while saying goodbye.

I spoke with dozens of A's fans at the "Fans Fest" in February, and reached out to some prominent voices afterward, and I found some common themes. A prominent reason for not boycotting was that A's fans feel for the players and want to support them.

"We'll go to some A's games because I support the team. I don't support Fisher, but I definitely support the players," longtime fan Dana Carlson told me. "They don't deserve to not have anyone in the stadium. So its a really tricky situation where you want to do right, but you want to support them, too."

Many are planning to see the A's play on the road instead of at the Coliseum, especially after seeing the support from rival fan bases last year, with fans planning trips across the U.S.

"I'm not going to any games in Oakland. I'm going to go visit family in Minnesota, and I'm going to try to schedule it for when the A's are in Minnesota ... but I'm not gonna give Fisher a dime," a fan named Eddie told me.

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Will McNeil, known as "Rightfield Will" to A's fans who see him at every game, is treating the 2024 season as his "last hurrah," and expects to attend games in Cleveland, Minnesota, Atlanta and San Diego. He spoke to me in between two trips to Arizona to attend spring training games, and mentioned that working for Marriott International Inc. (MAR) allows him to accomplish his trips cheaply, though he still spends too much to count.

"How much money have I spent? I I don't want to calculate it because I'd probably be really questioning my life decisions for the most of the past 20 years doing what I do. So I don't really want to add all that up right now," he said.

Oakland 68s president Leon is planning to attend games in Baltimore and Philadelphia, but also has a plan to attend games in Oakland while still trying to hurt Fisher. His group has decided to boycott the games that are typically the most well-attended every year, which A's fans know are the games that help the franchise the most.

"Our thing is going to be to boycott the huge games, the money-making games," he said. "So don't go see the [San Francisco] Giants, don't go to the big Opening Day. ... We're sending a schedule to like to kind of divert people. We'll have watch parties at a local pub or restaurant, and the money that you were gonna spend at the game, spend it here instead. And then, you know, it helps the local economy as well."

Leon is also hoping to secure groups of tickets that the A's give out to nonprofits every year to distribute in the community, known as "commissioner's tickets." The Oakland 68s have received them in years past.

"We just give them all away. And for people that don't wanna pay to John Fisher, we are more than happy to just hand those away, and you don't have to pay him and you get to watch the game," Leon said.

Many other A's fans are planning to boycott the season, with just a single exception - the final home game of the year. If it is the last A's game in Oakland, they don't want to miss it. The same phenomenon led to decent attendance at the final home game last season, when a friend who spent much of his 20s with me in the bleachers at the Coliseum flew back from his home in Connecticut for one more game.

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03-28-24 1713ET

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