400,000 fans showed up for Northern CA’s jam-packed start to summer sports action
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- More than 410,000 fans attended about 25 major sporting events from June 22 to July 9.
- Golden 1 Center hosted more than 30,000 fans across three California Classic games.
- Cal Expo’s MoonPay X Games League drew 52,851 fans over three days.
Over about the last three weeks, there have been a lot of firsts and otherwise major moments in Sacramento-area professional sports.
The World Cup came to the Bay Area with Sacramento Republic FC-hosted watch parties across California’s capital region, West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park hosted the two-time reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers for the first time and the X Games landed at Cal Expo for the games’ first-ever team based event.
Meanwhile, the Sacramento Kings may have selected their guard of the future in the NBA draft, who then played a key role in the return of the California Classic exhibition series.
Through it all, the fans showed up.
More than 410,000 total spectators attended about two dozen events that took place between the formal start of summer on June 21 and Wednesday of this week, The Sacramento Bee determined using a combination of official attendance figures and crowd size estimates.
Here’s a look back at the last few weeks of sports in the Sacramento area and how many fans showed up at each big event.
Acuff-mania at watch party + Kings host CA Classic
About 3,000 fans who had gathered June 23 at Golden 1 Center to watch the first round of the draft on the arena’s big screen erupted with cheer when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced the Kings’ selection of Arkansas star guard Darius Acuff Jr. with the No. 7 overall pick.
The pick has been received positively by analysts and fans, with a common sentiment that the Kings have maybe finally gotten their guy at the guard position.
After signing and officially introducing their three draft picks — Acuff, forward Alex Karaban (No. 29 overall) and guard Emannuel Sharp (No. 45) — Acuff and Sharp played in two games apiece over the team’s three exhibition games July 4-6 at Golden 1 Center.
Acuff made the game-winning assist in a 79-76 win over the Brooklyn Nets, before scoring 22 points including two clutch 3s in the Kings’ 95-89 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks.
More than 30,000 fans were in attendance across the three California Classic games, a Kings spokesperson said.
X Games debuts in Sacramento
While the X Games originally intended to make its Sacramento debut in 2025, the event that took place at Cal Expo from June 26-28 was likely worth the wait for fans of the extreme action sports series.
On top of being the first X Games ever held in Sacramento, it was also the first stop of the Moonpay X Games League, a new format featuring a $500,000 prize pot for a winning team, rather than the competition being based entirely on individual performances.
For the three-day event, Cal Expo transformed into an X Games hub, where some of the world’s best BMX bike, skateboard and motocross athletes competed across 18 events. Embracing a local landmark, the park course had a ramp styled after Sacramento’s Tower Bridge, the State Fair site’s iconic sky ride ferried guests and skateboarder Nyjah Huston of nearby Davis made a podium at age 31.
In total, 52,851 fans attended the games in person across the three days, X Games officials said in a news release.
A’s host Dodgers and Marlins
The A’s lone home stand over the past three weeks, which spanned June 29 to last Sunday, July 5, was a big one.
The Dodgers — who have one of the biggest fan bases in the league, the best record in Major League Baseball and are winners of the last two World Series — as well as the Miami Marlins, who have emerged as a likely playoff team, each played three games at Sutter Health Park.
While the A’s got clobbered in their first two contests against the Dodgers, they beat L.A. 7-1 in the final game of the series in what would be their only win of the home stand. All three games were sellouts, with a vast majority of the crowd supporting the Dodgers.
Miami swept the A’s in another well-attended three-game series. Sunday’s finale against the Marlins proved to be the most exciting game of the home stand, as the A’s nearly came back in a 9-8 loss in which starter Eury Perez pitched seven perfect innings against the A’s, leaving the mound with Miami up 8-0.
Saturday’s game, which featured postgame fireworks for the July 4 holiday, was the only sellout of that series.
Here are the attendance numbers for the six A’s games, according to the team:
- 12,394 (sellout), June 29 vs. Dodgers
- 12,387 (sellout), June 30 vs. Dodgers
- 12,592 (sellout), July 1 vs. Dodgers
- 10,312, July 3 vs. Marlins
- 12,523 (sellout), July 4 vs. Marlins
- 8,686, July 5 vs. Marlins
World Cup takes center stage
While there has been a lot going on in Sacramento, no sporting event is bigger globally than the FIFA World Cup, six games of which were played just a couple of hours away in Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium (officially called the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium for the event).
Of those six games, three took place during the roughly three-week period this article is looking at, including the United States’ historic win over Bosnia-Herzegovina during the knockout Round of 32 on July 1.
All six games in Santa Clara were reported as sellouts and FIFA said 99.6% of the stadium’s capacity was used across the games. In total, about 206,025 fans attended the last three games after the calendar flipped to summer.
Locally, Sacramento Republic FC hosted a series of free World Cup watch parties downtown for both the U.S. and Mexican teams, drawing about 45,000 total attendees, Republic FC president and general manager Tim Holt told The Sacramento Bee last week.
The watch party for the Americans’ Round of 16 loss to Belgium drew 3,500 to Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, according to previous Bee reporting.
The World Cup undoubtedly whipped up fans’ soccer fever, though Republic FC’s win over Rhode Island FC on Wednesday drew only a moderate-sized crowd by its standards.
The only soccer game played in the Western half of the U.S., with the World Cup taking a day off, saw a reported 8,436 fans, fewer than the typical 10,000-plus that is common for the USL team, according to Bee reporting.
Sports frenzy by the numbers
Add all of the above up, and here’s what you get for Northern California’s flurry of sporting entertainment since the start of summer.
World Cup in Santa Clara (final three matches): 206,025
A’s six-game home stand: 68,903
X Games: 52,851
Republic FC World Cup watch parties: about 45,000
California Classic and Kings’ draft watch party: about 33,000
Republic FC vs. Rhode Island FC: 8,436
Grand total: About 414,000 (336,206 confirmed plus 78,000 estimated)
The Bee’s Chris Biderman, Camila Pedrosa and Graham Womack contributed to this story.
