Post by TheShadow on Jan 30, 2005 15:19:39 GMT -5
www.sacbee.com/
Personal Seat License purchase shortfalls have helped cause 54 TV blackouts since 1995.
By Jim Jenkins -- Bee Staff Writer
ALAMEDA - The Raiders wouldn't be the Raiders without off-field legal issues, including a major fight with the NFL over compensation for their 13-year Los Angeles stay. But the most immediate threat to the team's financial stability in Oakland is just around the corner: the expiration of an already troubled season-ticket plan at the end of the 2005 season.
Beginning in 1995, when the Raiders left Southern California to return to their franchise roots, fans who wanted a guarantee of buying season tickets had to purchase 10-year-term Personal Seat Licenses. These fees, ranging from $250 to $4,000 depending on seat location, were set up to produce extra revenue for the stadium authority to help pay off the bond-generated financing of Coliseum improvements, a condition in the deal for the Raiders' return.
But the idea flopped. In the course of selling the PSLs, the Oakland Football Marketing Association, the ticket agency created to run the operation, experienced nightmarish problems - duplicate applications for PSLs and rejected credit-card authorizations from anxious yet overextended fans in a largely blue-collar community.
That crisis became a disaster. Whereas the marketing project's initial aim was to sell out all 63,132 seats in an expanded Coliseum, the projections never came close to being met. Faced with the prospect and embarrassment of thousands of empty seats their first year back in the East Bay, the Raiders began offering the public single-game purchases.
Once that happened and customers saw a way around the seating-rights barrier, the PSL sales, which never rose much above 40,000, plummeted. The Raiders estimate the present PSL total at 31,000. The resulting non-sellouts have meant 54 television blackouts since 1995.
Season-ticket holders were angry over being duped.
"It wasn't a great feeling for someone to sit near you who had bought his ticket the same day as the game," said Sacramento Realtor Terry O'Neil, who with several friends was among the first PSL customers to purchase choice seats. "After a while, they'd even make jokes, like, 'Hey, how are those PSLs working out?' I don't see any of us going through this PSL business again. There are no benefits."
Anyone can do the math. The Raiders' current PSL membership represents less than half of stadium capacity. Next year at this time, the PSL membership will be gone unless one of two things happens:
* The present plan is extended by PSL resales through the final five years of the Raiders' 16-year stadium lease, which isn't likely, given what the public knows.
* Or a new plan is presented. To that end, there have been suggestions of ticket surcharge arrangements and more fan access to the team. But so far there hasn't been an alternative that has satisfied the revenue needs of the Raiders and their city-county landlords, who split a $20 million annual debt service administering adjoining outdoor and indoor facilities for the Raiders, A's and Warriors.
A winning Raiders team in 2005 might spark box-office enthusiasm, but that's going to take an abrupt turnaround after a total of nine wins the last two seasons.
"We're all worried that time is ticking away, that we're getting down to the wire," said Gail Steele, chairman of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and member of the Coliseum-operated Joint Powers Authority linked with the city. "The good thing in all of this is that both sides are now talking. We are meeting with the Raiders on a regular basis. We're trying to lay everything out on the table, and that's helpful. I very much hope this will lead to some some proposals."
Raiders chief executive officer Amy Trask said the lines of communication are open. "Whenever, they've called, we've been more than willing to sit down with them and listen to what they have to say," she said.
Trask's comment might surprise some people but suggests a truce could be in the offing between adversaries who were involved in a bitter court fight two years ago in Sacramento.
Trask and managing general partner Al Davis were important witnesses testifying in the Raiders' broken-promises suit against Oakland and Alameda County officials. They sued for $1.1 billion. They were awarded $34.2 million by a jury convinced the Raiders were victimized by negligence but not fraud. Had the jury found fraud, it would have meant a much larger damages figure.
A major part of the case was the fiasco behind the sellout predictions and how PSLs would work and their early collapse. The shortfall left East Bay taxpayers bitter and in debt trying to make up for a ticket-sales windfall that never came. It left the Raiders angry and distrustful of politicians who crafted the deal for their homecoming.
"We've always felt," said Trask, who insists the team is interested in a solution, "that any PSLs sold should be for the length of the team's stadium lease, as is the case with other teams. Under any new plan, those fans who were among the first to buy PSLs for our games should be taken care of somehow. Their loyalty should be worth something."
Legal observers who followed the Sacramento trial found it odd the Raiders don't oversee their own season-ticket sales, a common practice. Steele said that topic has been raised often with the Raiders, but each time she said the answer was they weren't interested in taking over the process.
The Raiders' position has been they were promised a competent marketing and ticket arrangement when they moved and shouldn't have to promote their own popularity. They might have attendance problems, but for the past three years they have been first in the NFL's licensed merchandised sales, they draw well on the road, and they have an international following, underscoring one of Davis' favorite slogans, "The Raiders are global."
There's no debating the team's silver-and-black style appeal, Steele said, noting, "You can't go very far in this county without seeing Raiders bumper stickers or people wearing their caps or shirts. They have a long history here that we want to maintain."
It remains to be seen, though, if a compromise can be reached amid a backdrop of the Raiders still trying to collect on the $34.2 million judgment.
"We don't talk about that when we meet," Steele said. "We are trying to establish trust."
Had the Raiders been awarded giant damages on fraud, there was even speculation they might use it as leverage to get out of their Oakland lease and go back to Los Angeles.
In 2001, the Raiders lost a $1.2 billion suit against the NFL, alleging the league reneged on a new stadium proposal near Hollywood Park, thus forcing them out of the L.A. market. The verdict was subsequently thrown out because of juror misconduct in deliberations. A judge ordered a new trial, but the league is appealing that decision.
"The suit was never about us moving," said Raiders general counsel Jeff Birren, who disputes the team's persona of initiating legal fights. "It's about entitled compensation, the difference in value between the Los Angeles opportunity and Oakland. It has to be resolved. We feel very comfortable of eventually prevailing."