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The Athletics are preparing a new approach to fan loyalty as the team moves toward its planned relocation to Las Vegas. Leadership wants to treat season ticket holders more like high value casino customers, using tiered rewards and personalized perks inspired by Las Vegas players club programs.
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Team President Marc Badain said professional sports organizations often underestimate the importance of their most loyal customers. Season ticket holders represent a major share of team revenue, yet many franchises do not invest enough resources into maintaining those relationships. He said:
“I don’t think teams spend enough time or money on (season ticket holders). They become sort of complacent to it. … Especially when you talk about gifting or communication or just emails. I mean, I’m a season ticket holder for a couple of teams, and I see how they do it, and I’m not overly impressed, right? It’s more than just shoving a scarf in a box and sending it to you.”
The Athletics want to replace that model with a system that reflects how casino operators treat loyal guests. Under the concept, rewards and experiences would vary based on how much a customer spends on tickets and team related activities.
Badain said:
“It doesn’t have to be the same gift for everybody. Add a little bit of personalization to it. You’re sitting in Vegas, so if you are a gambler and you are someone who has a casino host, that casino host has a budget to take care of you. It’s a function of how much you spend. That same philosophy should apply to sports teams and their season ticket holders.”
The loyalty strategy arrives as the Athletics prepare for a major transition. The team is developing a $2 billion stadium project in Las Vegas, which is expected to open in 2028.
Season ticket sales remain one of the most important revenue streams for sports franchises. Badain explained that teams should consider reinvesting a portion of that income into the fans who generate it:
“Say it’s $100 million in revenue, it’s more in a lot of cases. What’s the right number for the team to turn around and spend back on those customers? Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but just look at it from an economics standpoint.”
Retaining existing customers also costs less than attracting new ones. Badain pointed to that economic reality when describing the new focus on loyalty programs, saying:
“The replacement cost is so much more significant than these little touchpoints that you can do. So, we’re spending a lot of time on that.”
The new Las Vegas ballpark will also reflect a different design philosophy. Rather than maximizing the number of seats, the team chose to reduce capacity to create open social areas that allow fans to move around during games.
The stadium will include 30,000 fixed seats and about 33,000 total capacity with standing room, making it the smallest venue in Major League Baseball.
Several gathering spaces throughout the ballpark will allow fans to watch games from different perspectives without requiring a specific seat upgrade. According to Badain:
cThere’s probably, five, six, seven areas in the building that I’ll just call social environments that don’t require you to buy a ticket to go to that area you obviously got to buy a ticket to go to the ballpark but baseball is a different sport than others, and not everybody wants to sit in their seat for nine innings and watch the game.”
One of those locations will be a large center field plaza where fans can watch the game from a standing viewing area, a “gathering area for fans to watch the game from a different perspective.”
Additional spaces will include bullpen viewing zones and bar areas on upper levels where fans can socialize while following the game.
“If you’re coming there and want to sit and watch the game for nine innings, you can. If you want to go to this bullpen area and go down in this alleyway and watch the game through the fenceline, you’ll be able to do that,” Badain also noted.
The approach reflects a broader shift toward experience driven sports venues that combine entertainment, hospitality, and social environments rather than traditional stadium seating layouts.