November 03, 2005

Silver-and-blackmail

Speaking of leases, the Oakland Raiders have a new one as well. The big news: The elimination of personal seat licenses, the pay-for-the-right-to-buy-tickets scheme that was supposed to help repay the county for expansion of the Oakland Coliseum, but which bombed when fans realized there were plenty of good seats available without PSL fees. With the original PSLs set to expire next year and hardly any fans expected to renew (most PSLs are permanent and can be resold by buyers, but for some reason Alameda County went with a 10-year expiration date, further hampering sales), the county had little choice but to eliminate them, even if it meant putting the public further in the hole on its $20 million a year in stadium bond payments. The county will now get a bigger share of parking and concessions fees, but as county supervisor Gail Steele acknowledged: "The subsidy is going to continue. But it's not going to continue with additional legal fees."

Meanwhile, the new Raiders lease still runs out in 2010, and team owner Al Davis sounds eager to use that as leverage for still more concessions, if not from the county, then from Raiders fans who have been increasingly turning up disguised as empty seats. Spake Al at the new-lease press conference:

"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. We want to make it work. We'll give our best effort to make it work...

"There are a lot of cities out there who are just waiting, just waiting for (an NFL team) to raise their hand and say, 'We're interested.'

"And the numbers that they'll pay are very great. You saw it happen in Houston. They built a brand new stadium. You saw it happen in Cleveland when they lost the Browns to Baltimore. Brand new stadium. Big, modern edifices.

"I realize [the price to taxpayers] can't be too high, but whatever it is, you've got to think of the quality of life that we bring to the community, that baseball brings to the community, that basketball brings to the community."