River Cats’ new brand strikes out with the public

The River Cats did not strike gold with their new marketing strategy.

Last Thursday, the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats announced in a promotion and video that the team will change its identity to the “Gold Diggers” for select games. The alternate uniforms were to honor Sacramento’s gold rush history. 

The video, which depicts women seeing the new uniform and their eyes turning into dollar signs, was not received well by many in the public. Many deemed the video as sexist and misogynistic with the play on the women as “gold diggers” trope.  

After receiving backlash, the team decided to scrap the project altogether, deleting the video and removing all traces of the Gold Diggers from their website the next day. They will no longer proceed with the identity change. 

“Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark. Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold county, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake. We will no longer be using this identity,” the team said in an email statement. 

Sacramento Bee opinion writer Robin Epley wrote an opinion story about how the rebrand was a “misogynistic joke on women.”

Sacramento City Councilmember Lisa Kaplan said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the River Cats missed the mark big time. She wrote, “It is a sexist and demeaning video,” and she expects more from the organization. 

In an interview with CapRadio, Kaplan said she was stunned at the “appalling and distasteful” video when she first saw it.

“All I could think of is, one, this has to be an April Fool's joke. Two, this can't be real. And three, there's no way that the River Cats and their organization would approve, like a 1950s era type of marketing campaign,” Kaplan said.

According to Kaplan, after seeing the video, she contacted her city council members and colleagues in West Sacramento, Quirina Orozco and Verna Sulpizio Hull, and they reached out to both the River Cats and the Sacramento Kings to voice their strong objection.

Kaplan said the campaign was not done in an inclusive and diverse setting because “if there had been women who felt that they could use their voice and people who are of indigenous background, they absolutely would have objected to this.”

“It harkens back to gold diggers and what John Sutter did with Fort Sutter and finding gold and the harm that was done to Native Americans. And then ‘gold digger,’ the double entendre play on words of claiming what certain women are, was absolutely unacceptable,” Kaplan said.

With the video deleted and the team deciding not to follow through with the uniforms, Kaplan wanted to thank the River Cats for acknowledging their mistake.

“I hope that moving forward the River Cats, if they want to highlight our rich history and diversity in Sacramento, that they bring together an inclusive group of people who can explore ways of how we can uplift our region and our rich history and diversity versus exploiting it at the expense of others,” she said. 

Kaplan said she hopes the team works closely with West Sacramento's city council and women leaders to find ways to show that the team's leadership can be trusted.

“I grew up a baseball fan,” Kaplan said. “Women love baseball, but that marketing campaign basically said they see us as token sex symbols, and that is really harmful.”

Kaplan thanked Sacramento Bee writer Epley for writing her opinion article and “elevating this issue to bring change.”

“This is when elected and news can work together to make a change for the positive,” Kaplan said.

This isn’t the only Sacramento identity change that received some sort of backlash. In November, the Sacramento Kings announced alternate uniforms and a mascot, Roy Al, where some Redditors said he looked like “nightmare fuel.”