AUSTRIAN: RAIDERS NOT RESPONSIVE ON HOLLYWOOD PARK DEAL

(March 26, 2001) - Former NFL President Neil Austrian testified Monday that the Raiders made no commitments and did not provide any documents that would be expected in a normal business deal during the negotiations for the proposed Hollywood Park stadium 1995. Austrian was on the stand for his third day Monday during the Raiders vs. NFL trial in State Superior Court in Los Angeles.

Under questioning from NFL attorney Allen Ruby, Austrian testified that while the NFL and Hollywood Park officials produced correspondence, term sheets and models of financial projections, the Raiders never produced any such documentation. Austrian also stated that while the NFL granted at least one Super Bowl and 10,000 extra tickets and Hollywood Park officials and the City of Inglewood were prepared to go forward, no commitment of any type to the Hollywood Park project was ever made by the Raiders.

Austrian, who no longer works for the NFL and did not have to appear in this case, was asked by Ruby why he chose to testify. "It’s the right thing to do," Austrian said.

Among the key points made on Monday by Austrian:

• The Raiders never responded to numerous letters from Austrian, addressed to the club and Hollywood Park. Such correspondence included an April 4, 1995 letter to Davis and Michael Finnegan of Hollywood Park seeking clarifications to terms of the proposed deal. The Raiders were also copied in on an April 6, 1995 letter to Finnegan and a May 1, 1995 letter to Finnegan in which specifications to host a Super Bowl were spelled out.

• The extra Super Bowl tickets that the Raiders were offered were worth $1,500-$2,000 apiece when leveraged as part of sponsorship and suite sales packages. The first committed Super Bowl at Hollywood Park would have given the Raiders approximately 18,000 tickets - 8,000 for hosting the game and an additional 10,000 as part of the stadium deal. That would result in $27-$36 million in value. Austrian said that the NFL had "never made before" any similar commitment.

• Austrian testified that the second team option agreement gave the Raiders yet another 8,000 Super Bowl tickets, 4,000 more than was anticipated in the resolution approved at the May 23-24 League Meeting in Jacksonville. At that meeting, the Raiders were allocated only half of the home club tickets for the second Super Bowl at the proposed stadium, with the other half going to the second Los Angeles team. However, as part of the June 8 second-team option agreement, the Raiders were to be the host team for both Super Bowls, thus ensuring the Raiders a total of 18,000 tickets for that game worth another $27-$36 million.

• As part of the agreement, Austrian said: "The Raiders would have had a significant head start in selling suites and club seats." He noted that, "The Raiders could have designed the stadium in a number of ways that could have almost precluded anybody from wanting to play here." Austrian said that the Raiders had the right to choose the color scheme and could decorate the suites as they saw fit, including with Raiders memorabilia or pictures of Al Davis.

• Austrian refuted the Raiders assertion that the Hollywood Park stadium could not be named Raiders Stadium, stating that such a limitation was not included in any of the final agreements.

• Austrian testified that he spoke with Al Davis by phone on May 13, 1995. Austrian said that Davis told him that the Raiders would have a separate deal with Hollywood Park to recoup any revenue lost as a result of the second team. Austrian testified that the League never expressed a problem with such a deal as long as the revenue stream from Hollywood Park to the Raiders wasn’t "directly attributable" to the second team.

• Earlier in the trial, the Raiders claimed they were exploring stadium deals with other cities because the Los Angeles Coliseum was unsuitable for play in 1995. Austrian testified that it would be "somewhat strange" to have the team play somewhere out of Los Angeles while trying to sell suites and club seats to the proposed Hollywood Park stadium.

• Austrian testified that it was possible that a second team in Hollywood Park could sell out club seats and suites, but at prices 75% of that reached by the Raiders. The Raiders’ advantage in selling such seats and suites was very substantial, especially considering the leverage the Raiders would have hosting two Super Bowls and holding 10,000 extra tickets for each game. Austrian said that the second team would have received no special allocation of tickets to either Super Bowl.

• When the Raiders moved from Los Angeles to Oakland in 1995, the team’s local revenue increased by nearly 50 percent over its revenues in 1994. The team ranked 8^th in the NFL in local revenue in Oakland in 1995 vs. 23^rd in 1994. Operating profit increased as a result of the move to Oakland by approximately $8 million from 1994 to ’95.

• A memo from Amy Trask to Commissioner Tagliabue at the time of the club’s relocation to Oakland projected that Raiders had $5 million worth of suite income in 1995. The actual income that season was $1.9 million. Austrian testified that the Raiders never blamed the NFL for the failure to meet Trask’s projections.