There Is No Inherited Fan Base
When the Golden Knights began their inaugural season, they had no existing Las Vegas hockey fans to draw on. They had to build a fan base from scratch, in a market with no hockey tradition, using the novelty of professional sports in Las Vegas as their primary asset. They succeeded by winning immediately, by connecting with the community through the tragedy of October 1st, and by creating an identity that felt specifically Las Vegas rather than a transplant from somewhere else.
The Athletics face a similar challenge with an additional complication: they are not an expansion team with a clean slate. They are a relocated franchise with a complicated history, an owner who has become a symbol of bad-faith negotiation to a significant segment of baseball's fan base, and a relocation story that has generated more negative national attention than any franchise move since the Brooklyn Dodgers left for Los Angeles. Building a Las Vegas fan base means building it despite all of that, not because of it.
The Marketing Strategy: Las Vegas First
The organizational approach to fan base development in Las Vegas has centered on positioning the Athletics as a Las Vegas institution rather than an Oakland franchise that happened to move. The branding efforts have emphasized the Las Vegas identity -- the green and gold of the desert, the Strip location, the convergence of sports and entertainment that no other baseball market can offer.
This is the right instinct, even if execution is still in early stages. Las Vegas fans who never had any connection to Oakland are the most important growth market. Trying to inherit Oakland's fan base is both impossible and counterproductive -- Oakland fans largely want nothing to do with the franchise under its current ownership. The new fans are going to come from Las Vegas residents, from tourists who encounter the team for the first time during a Strip visit, and from baseball fans in markets without MLB teams who adopt the Athletics as their team because of the Las Vegas entertainment proposition.
Community Outreach: Playing the Long Game
The Athletics have invested in community programming in the Las Vegas valley since the relocation announcement. Youth baseball initiatives, school partnerships, stadium tour programs at Allegiant and other venues -- the kinds of grassroots engagement that are standard for franchise-building in new markets. The goal is to create an emotional connection with the community before the first pitch is thrown in Las Vegas, so that the stadium's opening in 2028 feels like a culmination rather than an introduction.
The Henderson and North Las Vegas markets are where the most important community work is happening. These are the residential communities where the families who will become multi-generational A's fans live. A ten-year-old in Henderson who gets invited to a batting clinic run by an A's prospect in 2025 is a potential lifetime season ticket holder in 2035. These investments do not show up in the financial projections but they are the actual mechanism through which sports franchises build lasting fan bases.
Ticket Strategy: Competing for the Entertainment Dollar
Las Vegas residents have more entertainment options per capita than residents of virtually any other American city. A summer Friday night in Las Vegas competes for attention with a concert at the T-Mobile Arena, a show at one of a hundred venues, a dinner at any of thousands of restaurants, a poker session at one of fifty-plus casinos, and a dozen other A's games on the schedule that week. The challenge of selling tickets in Las Vegas is not convincing people that baseball is worth attending -- it is convincing them that baseball is worth attending more than everything else competing for their leisure time and disposable income.
The ticket strategy being developed for the Las Vegas market reflects this reality. Flexible plans that allow fans to pick specific games rather than committing to a full season. Theme nights and promotional events tied to the entertainment culture Las Vegas already understands. Premium experiences that compete on Las Vegas terms -- bottle service, VIP amenities, the kind of upscale presentation that the city's entertainment infrastructure has established as the baseline expectation for a night out.
The Tourist Revenue Stream
One aspect of the Las Vegas fan base that has no parallel in any other baseball market is the tourist component. The Strip location means that a certain percentage of every A's home game attendance will come from visitors who happen to be in Las Vegas and decide that a baseball game is a good way to spend a Tuesday evening. This is a revenue stream that does not require any community investment or loyalty development -- it is generated purely by the stadium's location in the most visited entertainment destination in North America.
The team has been deliberate about marketing to this audience. Partnerships with hotel concierge programs, advertising through casino resort channels, ticket packages bundled with hotel stays. The goal is to make the A's game the automatic entertainment choice for certain categories of Las Vegas visitors the way the Bellagio fountains or the High Roller are -- something you just do when you are in Las Vegas.
What Success Looks Like in 2028
The metric for a successful fan base launch in Las Vegas is not whether the Athletics can sell out every game in their first season. The metric is whether the fan base that exists in year one is measurably larger and more committed than in year two, and year three, and whether the organic growth of local fandom is supplementing rather than depending on the tourist base. A franchise that draws 28,000 per game in 2028 but is growing toward sellouts by 2031 is succeeding. A franchise that draws 22,000 in 2028 and is trending downward by 2031 is failing.
Everything the organization is doing right now -- the community outreach, the brand work, the ticket strategy, the stadium design -- is aimed at being in the first scenario rather than the second. Whether it works will depend on the product on the field, the ownership philosophy, and the sustained commitment to being a genuine Las Vegas institution rather than just a business operating in Las Vegas. The Golden Knights showed it can be done. Now it is the Athletics' turn.
Find Las Vegas A's tickets and gear through our affiliate partners. Purchases made through these links support independent coverage at no extra cost to you.
For more A's coverage across the network: