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It’s the City That Will Be the Loser if Lockout Cancels Padres’ Games

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The City of San Diego will lose an estimated $40,000 for each baseball game at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium that is canceled because of the ongoing labor dispute between professional baseball players and team owners, Assistant City Manager Jack McGrory said Friday.

“It now appears very likely that the current baseball strike will affect the opening of the regular season,” Assistant City Manager Jack McGrory said in a memo issued Friday to city officials. It was uncertain on Friday, however, if the labor dispute would be settled in time to avert the cancellation of Padres home games in early April.

The Padres’ regular baseball season is scheduled to begin Monday, April 2, in Los Angeles. After four games against the Dodgers, the Padres return to San Diego for their 1990 home opener Friday, April 6, with the Cincinnati Reds. Following that three-game stand, the Dodgers are scheduled to travel to San Diego for a three-game stand beginning April 10.

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In addition to the $40,000 in ticket and parking revenue that the city would lose for each game, McGrory estimated that various employees working at the stadium--including concession workers, ushers and parking attendants--would lose $60,000 in wages per game. There are also other indirect economic impacts to the city such as the lost expenditures from visiting teams and fans, according to McGory.

“We’re hoping it doesn’t happen,” stadium manager Bill Wilson said Friday. “But if (a cancellation occurs) we lose 10% of ticket sales, which amounts to $23,000 per game, average . . . and $28,000 for parking revenue.”

However, that $51,000 gross revenue loss would be trimmed because the city won’t have to absorb expenses generated by baseball games. The stadium won’t have to pay $4,500 for cleanup crews after each canceled games and the police department won’t be paid $3,500 for patrolling the parking lot on game days.

Wilson said the cancellation of some baseball games could stymie the stadium’s ongoing attempt to retain part-time custodial employees at the stadium. “We’ve assembled a cast of people who are waiting to go to work,” Wilson said. “We’ve worked all winter to hire them and I’m sure some of them are going to look elsewhere” if early season games are canceled.

The city-run stadium isn’t the only operation that would lose revenue if the labor dispute is not settled soon.

“For each game that isn’t played it means 50 or 60 people out of a job,” said a spokesman for Ace Parking, which holds the stadium parking lot contract. “For Ace, it means a difference on profit and loss. We could lose a couple of thousand (of dollars) a month if they cancel a lot of games.”

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“The Padres just are not generating any kind of interest in the community right now,” said Jim Oakley, an executive at Air Ads Inc., a Brown Field-based firm that operates banner-towing aircraft that fly over the stadium on game days. “I know of one client of ours in San Francisco who has put a new promotion on hold until this thing is resolved, so it’s definitely having an impact.”

When the Padres are drawing good crowds, Air Ads regularly includes the stadium in its advertising loops that extent West to the beaches. “When you’ve got 40,000 to 50,000 captive readers, (the banners) are like required reading. Everybody looks up to see what they say.”

Bus lines also would lose revenue if home games are canceled. “We book four to six buses per week to Padres games,” said Gus Zemba, president and co-owner of Kopecki Bus Lines in San Diego. “We haven’t had cancellations yet, though, because it’s too early.”

However, Kopecki already has cancelled two dozen charters to Yuma. “We typically do quite a few trips to (the Padres’ spring training games) in Yuma, but that’s all out the window now.”

KFMB-AM, the radio voice of the Padres, has filled programming holes caused by the cancellation of pre-season baseball games with “fantasy baseball games,” according to KFMB Station Manager Paul Palmer. The Padres are 19-0 in the fictional games, Palmer said, but KFMB would “much rather be broadcasting baseball . . . we’re innocent bystanders along with the fans.”

KFMB pays the Padres Baseball Club for the right to broadcast the games, so it will receive rebates for games not played. But KFMB generates baseball-related revenue by selling advertising that runs during pre- and post-game shows.

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In the event of cancellations, KFMB would continue to fill the ballgame time slots with sports-oriented programming, including more “fantasy” games. “We did that during the last strike and it worked pretty well,” Palmer said.

However, “what we’d miss would be the numbers in terms of ratings generated by the actual games,” Palmer said.

The loss of baseball games would mean little to San Diego Transit, which runs a dozen or so buses to home games.

“If the Pads don’t play, we’ll actually save money because we usually take a loss on Padres service,” a bus system spokesman said. “Only on the bigger events--things like the home opener, the Sky Show, Cap Night--do we break even.”

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