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On Thursday, the Sacramento River Cats, the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, introduced a temporary alternative brand for the “Gold Diggers.”
So temporary was the branding that, by Friday, they announced they would no longer pursue it.
That announcement came in the form of a statement to SFGate after the club posted an announcement video full of sexist tropes, leading to intense backlash from the community. That video, which had been posted to several of the team’s social media accounts, has since been scrubbed from all of them.
“Our recent marketing campaign for an alternative identity clearly missed the mark,” the team said in its statement. “Our intention was to creatively reference the rich history of Sacramento and gold country, but our approach was wrong, and we are sorry for the mistake. We will no longer be using this identity.”
The plan had been for the Triple-A team to wear uniforms featuring the Gold Rush-era mining theme five times during the season, starting on April 19. While the black-and-gold uniforms would have included a bearded man wearing a headlamp and holding a pickaxe, Thursday’s announcement video focused differently on the meaning of the Gold Diggers’ name.
“On Thursday, the team unveiled the alternate branding via a promotional video that seemed to lean into another meaning of ‘gold digger,’ depicting two women with cartoon dollar signs in their eyes at seeing the new Gold Diggers uniform and hat,” wrote SFGate’s Alex Simon. “One of the women was significantly younger than her apparent husband — with whom she seemed to have just left a jewelry store, wearing a large and expensive new ring on her finger.”
According to a Thursday write-up in the Sacramento Bee about the branding, “the new alternate name is a double-entendre that the team said ‘brings playful and cheeky elements’ to its identity.”
Multiple city councilmembers in Sacramento and West Sacramento shared their disgust with the video. A Sacramento Bee opinion column written by Robin Epley referred to the branding as a “misogynistic joke on women,” saying “video showed us exactly what the leadership at the River Cats thinks of women.”
River Cats president and COO Chip Maxson appeared on KMAX-TV’s “GoodDay Sacramento” morning show Thursday to discuss the branding and announcement video. He said the team is “all about having fun.”
SFGate’s Kimberly Alters, who initially wrote about the video on Thursday, reached out to the team but did not receive a response. However, by Friday morning, references to the Gold Diggers theme had been removed from the team’s social media accounts and website.
The video, with commentary from Epley, can still be viewed on the Sacramento Bee website.
