Post by TheShadow on Nov 4, 2005 20:56:32 GMT -5
www1.pressdemocrat.com
Team, city of Oakland, Alameda County, Coliseum come to agreement
By PHIL BARBER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
ALAMEDA - The dreaded PSL is dead. Or at least dying.
Under a tentative agreement announced Wednesday by the Raiders, the city of Oakland, the county of Alameda and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, the football team will assume responsibility for ticket sales beginning in 2006.
Gone will be the hated Personal Seat Licenses, surcharges and loge maintenance fees. Also disappearing is the oft-ridiculed Oakland Football Marketing Association, the entity created to sell and market Raiders tickets.
"The word 'PSL' has become a total negative throughout our culture up here in the Bay Area," Raiders owner Al Davis said at a press conference in the posh Westside Club at the Coliseum.
The licenses were required to buy season tickets and cost between $250 and $4,000, depending on seat location. Holders were going to have to renew them after this season.
Because games rarely sold out, fans who bought leftover tickets on game day wound up sitting next to fans who had paid a premium for the right to sit there.
The license program, set up in 1995, was supposed to cover the $200 million in publicly financed bonds that paid for the expansion of what is now Mc- Afee Coliseum.
The agreement announced Wednesday has not been signed, but that is expected to happen later this week. The document then must be approved by the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in December.
The compromise is a public acknowledgment that after 10 years of debate and five years of legal wrangling, everyone involved realized something had to be done about lagging ticket sales.
Fifty-six of the Raiders' 84 home games have failed to sell out, resulting in local TV blackouts, since the team moved back from Los Angeles in 1995.
"It wasn't done right, and it had alienated a lot of the fans," Davis said. "The PSL, if it had been re-marketed, would have met with protest."
Raiders chief executive Amy Trask stressed that the team is not abandoning its 26,000 PSL holders.
"We recognize the commitment you made when the team relocated, and you will be taken into account," Trask said. "PSL holders will have the opportunity to purchase their seat before anyone else has an opportunity."
While most fans will be relieved to hear they won't be asked to pony up additional fees to reserve future seats, the governmental agencies will go without the $1.9 million generated annually by the PSL agreements. They hope to make it up with more advantageous revenue sharing and, especially, by avoiding the court costs that have ravaged the city and the county.
The city and county are obligated for the $10 million a year in bond payments.
"If all of us, both the Raiders and the city/county, had back every dollar that we spent in the last two years, we probably would have paid off the bond," said Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele.
The Raiders are still owed $34.2 million by the insurers of the now-defunct Oakland Football Marketing Association, which the team had accused of fraud.
A Sacramento jury reached that verdict in August 2003, but the judge ordered both sides into arbitration on 17 lesser points, including day-of-game expenses, taxes and legal fees.
The agreement announced Wednesday effectively settles all of those points. It also addresses the sharing of revenue from concessions, parking, club fees, playoff games and suites. The agencies, for example, will receive all the parking revenues, which could go up $15 a vehicle over the next five years to help offset the loss of PSL revenue.
Davis was noncommittal on the topic of ticket prices. "They will be commensurate or competitive with the ticket prices in the National Football League," he said.
Left unresolved is the bigger issue of whether the Raiders will remain in Oakland for the long haul. The lease at the Coliseum expires in 2010.
"We want to make it work," Davis said. "We'll give our best effort to make it work."
EXTRA POINTS
WR Randy Moss (groin/ribs/pelvis) did not practice Wednesday, but coach Norv Turner expects him back today. DE Bobby Hamilton (ankle), C Jake Grove (knee), FB John Paul Foschi (finger) and DE DeLawrence Grant (ankle) were limited.
The Raiders signed S Reggie Tongue and released S Calvin Branch.