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- Chan Ho Park led Team61 to invest $70 million in the A’s.
- Team61 has invested $55 million so far, with $15 million pending MLB approval.
- The A’s announced the investment ahead of their planned 2028 move to Las Vegas.
A group led by the first South Korea-born MLB player invested $70 million in the Athletics, the club announced Sunday night, marking the second major investment in the past week ahead of its planned move to Las Vegas in 2028.
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Team61, the investment group, is led by former Major League pitcher Chan Ho Park, the first South Korea-born MLB All-Star, and also includes actors Ken Jeong and Daniel Dae Kim. Park will also become a senior adviser to A’s owner John Fisher, focusing on the club’s Asian strategy, the A’s said in a news release Sunday.
“South Korea is an exciting country for baseball, and we are thrilled to partner with Chan Ho Park and Team61 to support their continued future success,” Fisher said in the release. “Just as he pioneered and broke ground for Korean and Asian baseball players in America, we believe that this partnership with Chan Ho to pioneer Korean ownership in baseball will have long and lasting positive impacts.”
Of the $70 million invested, $55 million has already been provided, with another $15 million pending MLB approval, the release said.
According to the release, Team61’s investment made Park the first major Korean investor in an MLB team. Across nearly 2,000 innings in his 17-year career, Park posted a 4.36 ERA and recorded more than 1,700 strikeouts, highlighted by his 2001 All-Star season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, when he posted a 3.50 ERA.
“During my playing career, I introduced Korea to Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball to Korean fans,” Park said in the release. “Korea is now a baseball powerhouse with outstanding fans and a strong player-development system. Through exchanges with Las Vegas, which is opening a new era in Major League Baseball, I hope more opportunities will be created for the next generation of players.”
The announcement comes less than a week after Harbinger Sports Partners, a group tied to former Dallas Mavericks owner and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban, was announced as another minority owner of the club. Details of that investment were not disclosed.
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According to reporting from The Athletic, the agreements with Harbinger and Team61 were reached well before they were announced as part of a plan to raise roughly $550 million for construction of the A’s new stadium in Las Vegas.
The 33,000-seat stadium is expected to cost more than $2.1 billion in total, according to The Athletic. The Associated Press in May reported that the stadium was on track to be finished in time for the start of the 2028 season.
For the last two seasons, the A’s have played at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento after the team left Oakland in 2024 after 57 seasons ahead of the planned move to Vegas.
In that time, the A’s have gone by the Athletics or A’s, rather than include their temporary home in their official name. Sunday’s release, however, was a rare time that the club publicly called itself the “Las Vegas Athletics,” symbolizing a shift toward the team’s future.
The Athletics are expected to remain at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento through the 2027 season before moving into their planned Las Vegas ballpark in 2028.
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