Oakland Ballers Offer Fans Stock — and a Say in How Team Is Run

The Oakland Ballers are welcoming their fans as business partners, offering not only a financial stake in the independent minor league baseball club but also a say in how the team is run.

The Pioneer League team began selling fan shares on Wednesday morning through online crowdfunding platform DealMaker, putting up $1.235 million in fan stock with a minimum investment of $170.

Fan shareholders will have a voice in major decisions about team operations in two ways, the Ballers say: through a new fan-elected member of the team’s board of directors and by direct shareholder votes on decisions like hiring or firing the team’s head of baseball operations and whether the team will relocate.

“We’re doing something novel here, which is allowing fans representation on the board of directors, who is responsible for all governance decisions and will be in the room with a seat at the table and a voice,” Ballers CEO Paul Freedman said in an interview ahead of the stock sale.

Giving the fans a direct say, even a limited one, is a direct response to the treatment Oakland A’s faithful have received at the hands of that team’s management over the last two decades.

For years, the team sought to leave Oakland before setting its sights on a new stadium on the city’s waterfront. Then, when the team failed to win all it wanted in tax incentives and other concessions from the city and Alameda County, it engineered a move to Las Vegas. After finishing this season at the Oakland Coliseum, the team plans to play the next three years in Sacramento in the meantime.

All the while, fans’ anger mounted — including an ongoing campaign to shame A’s owner, John Fisher, into selling the team to interests that would keep it in the East Bay.

Freedman said he believes the A’s departure is part of a trend in which the “social contract” between pro sports teams and their fans has broken down.

Still, for decades, major U.S. baseball, basketball, football and hockey leagues have been replete with examples of teams relocating without a thought for their fans.

Challenged on that point, Freedman noted Walter Haas Jr., the Levi’s heir and CEO who bought the A’s from Charlie Finley in 1980 and kept them in Oakland. Haas sold the team in 1995.

“We believe that a lot of the value of a team comes from the fans themselves, the energy that they produce,” Freedman said. “That’s what’s fun about the game is enjoying it with your community. Right? And so whether it’s ever been there or not, we believe this is a pathway to create a social contract between fans and their communities.”

As is customary in crowdfunding, the Ballers are also offering a series of perks to those who invest more than the minimum. Those include early access to team merchandise at the $200 investment level, discounted tickets for those who buy $500 in shares, and invitations to attend spring training for investors who pony up $25,000 or more.

The SEC filing that accompanied the share offering discloses how the team has been financed to date and lays out several financial challenges.

In joining the Pioneer League last year, Freedman and Ballers co-founder Bryan Carmel needed to start two new teams so the league could maintain an even number of teams and a balanced schedule.

The league’s fee for each of the new franchises — the Ballers and its sister team, the Yolo High Wheelers — was $1.75 million, according to the SEC document. The Ballers’ owners financed the Yolo franchise fee with a loan from the league at 10% interest. An $875,000 payment on that loan is due in November.

The filing also discloses that most of the teams’ expenses so far, including the estimated $1.6 million the Ballers paid to refurbish West Oakland’s Raimondi Park and erect a temporary stadium there, have been met with a $5 million loan from Freedman.

The Ballers have generated lots of social media buzz in their first year, a level of enthusiasm not strongly reflected in attendance to date. Though a just-concluded six-game homestand marked the team’s strongest attendance since opening night in June, the team has drawn an average of 1,820 to its 4,100-seat ballpark.

The team currently ranks eighth among 10 Pioneer League teams that are reporting attendance this year, mostly small-town franchises in Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Utah.