Post by TheShadow on Nov 4, 2005 20:33:16 GMT -5
www.sacbee.com
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
OAKLAND - Memo to the Coliseum and its associated parties: Congratulations! You're on the clock.
The Five-Year Plan became a reality Wednesday. A lost decade of procedural bumblings behind them, the Raiders and the city and county officials who brought them here have effectively already negotiated pre-terms of a divorce.
The end date is 2011 - and it may not come to that, of course. It may be, as Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente said, that the sides will achieve a lease extension in the next two years. It may be true that, in De La Fuente's words, "The Raiders are the Oakland Raiders."
Still, you didn't have to strain to hear the undertones at work during a news conference called to announce, among other things, that the horror of the personal seat license is finally behind Raiders fans once and, presumably, forever.
Time and again, Raiders owner Al Davis invoked the five-year window - the final five years remaining on the 15-year lease he signed when he returned this club to its Northern California roots after a long and ultimately embittering dalliance with Los Angeles.
Davis said things like, "This is something that we can all live with - certainly for the next five years," and things like, "The past is the past, and we have five years to do enough to see that we can make the Raiders viable economically so we can compete with the other teams in our league and the other teams in our division."
Does that come through loud and clear enough, the part about the five years and the money? Al did everything but stamp it on the heads of the reporters who assembled at the Coliseum to hear the latest news.
That news, actually, has some upside for every Raiders game-attending fan except the poor sap who plunked down 10 years worth of PSL money for a seat inside the Coliseum that, as events would show, he didn't need to pay a premium to obtain.
The PSL ploy was a backfiring flop, part of an overall failed plan that led to the Raiders winning a $34.2 million fraud judgment against the Coliseum Authority in Sacramento County Superior Court in 2003. The recent agreement among the parties acknowledges that reality: As part of a series of agreements on outstanding legal issues, the Raiders are taking back the marketing and selling of their tickets - and they're blowing out PSLs, city and county surcharges, "loge maintenance" fees and the like.
That doesn't mean the cost of an actual game seat is going down. Asked about ticket prices, in fact, Davis replied, "They will be commensurate with ticket prices in the NFL" and then recited at some length his franchise's lowly standing (near the very bottom of the league, he claims) in overall revenue.
Al needs money to compete, and he hasn't been getting just a boatload of it out of a stadium that his team can't fill and a local television blackout that subsequently cannot be lifted. Marketing is about exposure, it's about a positive game experience for the fan, about association with a winner - all the things the Raiders have been struggling to nail down.
The city and county are protecting their own flanks. They understand what it means when Davis says, as he did Wednesday, "There are a lot of cities out there who are just waiting, just waiting for someone to raise their hand and say, 'We're interested.' And the numbers that they'll pay are very great."
Got that, Oakland? You're being put on a five-year notice that you've got to create an entirely new approach to revenue building at the Coliseum that substantially benefits the Raiders, or else you're going to be the owners of a very large concrete structure with no NFL team and a baseball team (the A's) that is already on record as pondering its own options.
The Raiders, as part of this new restructuring of revenue sharing, have agreed to fork over ownership of their practice facility when their Coliseum lease ends. That means that, in 2011, the city and county will have title to an Alameda complex that may be worth $50 million or more.
Of course, it'll be a football complex without a football team unless some awfully wonderful things happen between now and then. Five years, Oakland. Let it not be said that Al Davis has forgotten how to scheme a pressure offense.