Sacramento Group Seeks Raiders Stake : Pro football: Entrepreneurs trying to lure franchise to capital want part ownership to insure a long stay by team. But owner Al Davis reportedly is resisting such overtures.

The entrepreneur who has been leading an effort to entice the Los Angeles Raiders to Sacramento said Monday that he and his partners are asking for an ownership stake in the team.

Gregg Lukenbill, owner of the Sacramento Kings basketball franchise and a principal partner in the Sacramento Sports Assn. that has proposed building a football stadium there, said that Raiders’ owner Al Davis is resisting that suggestion.

“I don’t want a franchise to come in that’s not seriously committed to staying in Sacramento,” Lukenbill told a meeting of sports editors here. He said he is convinced that the best way to ensure that the team doesn’t leave would be to give Sacramento interests an ownership stake in the team.

This, Lukenbill said, would provide safeguards against the kind of landlord-tenant dispute that has seen Davis leave Oakland and threaten to leave Los Angeles, all in a seven-year period.

But, Lukenbill reported, Davis has told him that since he became a general partner of the Raiders a quarter-century ago, no other partners have been accepted.

Lukenbill was noncommittal on whether he and his Sacramento Sports Assn. associates--Joseph Benvenuti, Richard Anderson and Angelo Tsakapolous--would make an ownership stake a condition of closing the deal. “Maybe yes and maybe no,” he said.

But, he added, he cannot understand why Davis would be adamant in resisting a sale of part of the team to him and his associates.

Twenty years from now, Davis will be in his 80s, and by that time probably won’t care much whether Sacramento interests have a share in the team, the 35-year-old Lukenbill remarked.

“The only guy who ultimately knows which way he goes is Davis. But we’re in a favorable situation,” Lukenbill said. He added that he expects no decision before December, and it may come far later than that.

In any case, Lukenbill said, he is determined not to give the Raiders the kind of cash advance that Irwindale did when it handed the team $10 million before the city was assured it could actually build an Irwindale stadium. Now, Lukenbill noted, Irwindale has been unable to secure financing and it looks like Davis will take the $10 million and go elsewhere.

Lukenbill, in his remarks to Associated Press sports editors, repeatedly asserted that Sacramento provides a better economic opportunity for the Raiders than Los Angeles, even though Los Angeles is a bigger economic market.

The Raiders would not have nearly as much competition from other professional teams in Sacramento as they do in Los Angeles, and the populace would be much more enthusiastic about them, he argued.

Los Angeles, San Francisco and other big cities with sports franchises have “an ivory tower arrogance of haves over have-nots” toward smaller cities seeking franchises, Lukenbill said.

But, he added, there are 15 or 20 U.S. cities seeking professional sports teams. Like Sacramento, he said, many are prepared to offer bigger franchise fees and provide altogether better economic packages to secure such teams.

If Sacramento doesn’t get the Raiders, Lukenbill predicted, it will get some other football franchise, and fairly soon.

In the next 10 years, he said, many cities seeking franchises are likely to succeed, probably more often with football and basketball teams than with baseball, since the baseball leagues have federal protection against antitrust laws and are able to prevent their teams from moving around so much. But, Lukenbill said, baseball’s protection might lead to a third major league being formed in the near future.