Post by TheShadow on Dec 28, 2004 18:53:11 GMT -5
www.contracostatimes.com/
By Guy Ashley
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
OAKLAND - Jim Ramos was so overjoyed by the Raiders' return to Oakland in 1995 that he plunked down thousands of dollars for "personal seat licenses" simply to gain the right to buy tickets each season for the next decade.
The Alameda resident assumed his new status as PSL holder certified him as one of the hardest of the hard core, those fans who believe Kenny Stabler is a deity and Franco Harris' 1972 "immaculate reception" was a bad dream.
But the PSL plan has turned out to be unnecessarily expensive for Ramos and other PSL holders. Beyond that, it has proven a big flop for both the city of Oakland and for Alameda County, which were banking on PSL income to pay off the debt incurred to bring the Raiders back to Oakland in the first place.
To date, nearly half of the 55,000 available PSLs remain unsold, a problem that has forced the team to turn to single-game tickets to fill the stadium -- and for fans to watch on TV, as most home games are blacked out on local television because they aren't sold out 72 hours before kickoff.
The shortfall is also the primary reason both the city and county have to kick in a combined sum of nearly $20 million each year to keep up with debt payments.
This is why the PSLs' expiration at the end of next season is so important: If efforts to resell the PSLs fail, as many believe they will, local governments will then have to dip deeper into their coffers to keep up with debt payments.
Without successfully remarketing PSLs, or finding an alternative fans will accept, the interest the city and county pays each year on the remaining $187 million in debts related to the Raiders deal will, by 2006, surpass its payments on the principal. That situation portends years of paying through the nose for football while myriad other civic needs go unattended.
"There are high levels of anxiety about this, and rightly so," said Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele, a member of a joint city-county agency that operates the Coliseum. "It's the remarketing that can help get us out of this mess ... or make things a lot worse."
A successful new round of ticket sales, with "success" defined as 80 percent of the available PSLs, could help Oakland and Alameda County reduce their outstanding debt by nearly half and gain control of annual interest payments, said Patrick O'Connell, the county's auditor-controller.
A tough sell
Getting fans to re-up on PSLs may be a tall order. To some, the PSLs are a black hole into which gullible fans have deposited their wages for no reason; to others, they are a symbol for a boondoggle with few peers in professional sports.
When Ramos' license expires at the end of next season, he will reposition himself as a football fan and place the Raiders several notches lower on his priority list.
"I'm definitely not going to renew my PSL," Ramos said. Referring to the team's owner, he added, "I like Mr. Davis and I'll still root for the team, but I can't afford to drain my bank account for football anymore."
Ramos is among scores of fans who feel burned by their PSL investments, which ranged from $750 to $4,000 per seat, not counting the cost of tickets.
Because the sales of PSLs fell far short of projections, the Raiders over the years have been forced to sell tickets on a per-game basis, which means PSL holders are frequently forced to sit among other fans who enjoy the same games without having made the massive up-front investment.
"Why pay for a PSL when I can get a $47 ticket for $30 to any game I want, without paying a license fee?" said John Boyle, 31, as he sipped a beer in the Coliseum parking lot before Sunday's game with the Tennessee Titans. He got his tickets from a disgruntled PSL holder.
"That's why I call them 'personal sucker licenses,'" added Andy Miller of Concord, a lifelong Raiders fan who owns two PSLs.
The public's dim view of PSLs is hardly breaking news, as the ticket sales disaster surrounding the Raiders has played a key part in forcing the city of Oakland and Alameda County to pay nearly $200 million so far to cover the costs of the bond deal that lured the team back to the Bay Area.
But the resentments that continue to boil within fans like Ramos and Miller are an unpleasant reminder for the city and the county that things could get worse before they get better.
High hopes at the start
According to the 1995 deal that brought the Raiders back to Oakland after 13 seasons in Los Angeles, the PSLs were the primary mechanism to generate revenue for the city and county to pay off the $200 million in bond debt -- half owed by the city, half by the county -- assumed to renovate the Coliseum, pay for practice facilities and attend to other conditions the team set forth in its agreement to return north.
Because it was believed the Raiders would be an overwhelming success at the ticket office, elected officials approved the deal thinking the PSL revenues would pay off the entire debt within the first 10 years of the Raiders' 16-year lease to play at the Coliseum. Money generated by the new round of PSLs after the 2005 season was supposed to be pure profit for local government.
The Raiders' 10-year PSL arrangement is the shortest term of any in the NFL. In St. Louis, PSLs are for 30 years; in other cities, they are lifetime purchases.
But the PSL program foundered miserably from the start.
Steele, like just about everybody else associated with the Raiders deal, says the PSL concept has been such a flop in Oakland that a whole new approach must be developed.
With that in mind, Steele and Oakland City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente have initiated talks with Raiders officials in hope they can produce a ticketing plan that helps the team fill the stadium and allows local governments to pay down their debts. The debt has been refinanced, making a small dent in paydown.
The talks are still at the "getting reacquainted" stage -- no surprise, given the years of icy relationships, litigation and the $34.2 million in damages the Raiders won from the Coliseum in court last year.
Amy Trask, the Raiders' chief executive, says the team has always been open to talks, but believes strongly that reaching out to fans like Ramos and Miller has to be a priority when season tickets again become available.
"The interests of the people who stepped up and bought the PSLs when the team returned must be taken into consideration," she said.
That's a big reason why the Oakland Football Marketing Association, the joint panel of Raiders, city and county representatives that oversees the marketing of tickets, plans to hire a market-research firm in coming months to gauge fan reaction to various ticket schemes, said Raymond Chester, a former Pro Bowl tight end for the Raiders who chairs the association.
"There's still a significant fan base out there," Chester said. "But we recognize that even the most loyal fans are not totally satisfied."