While the Oakland A’s reopened RingCentral Coliseum to full capacity Tuesday night for their game against the Texas Rangers, attendance remained severely low.
For the first time since the final game of the 2019 baseball season, the A’s scrapped the previous social distancing and masking rules that had been in effect at the Coliseum to start the year.
However, the team only drew 4,739 fans for their celebrated night, a small fraction of the stadium’s 46,765 seat capacity listed on their website. That attendance would have been allowed even under the previous capacity limits.
“My dad loves it but he just can’t understand why there’s not enough people here. He said ‘why don’t we have more fans?’ I don’t know what to tell him.” Dave Limato, an A’s fan who attended Tuesday night’s game, told KPIX.
Oakland currently ranks 29th out of 30 in average attendance across all Major League Baseball teams, drawing 5,492 fans per game according to ESPN. Those numbers are skewed by the fact that teams have permitted different levels of capacity than others throughout the season.
In 2019, the last year that all teams allowed full crowds, the A’s ranked 24th out of 30 teams with an average of 20,521 fans per game.
Rumors have swirled over recent months about the A’s possibly relocating outside the Bay Area, after Major League Baseball gave the team permission to explore moving in May.
For years they have tried to complete plans for a new stadium at the Port of Oakland’s Howard Terminal. Urgency for those plans has increased with the possibility of relocation looming.
“I am full in Howard Terminal,” Dave Limato, another A’s supporter, told the station. “If they do get it done, I’m buying season tickets."
An Oakland City Council vote on the waterfront project is expected on July 30.
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