Corporate Status of 49ers a Concern : Pro football: NFL owners fear DeBartolo’s ownership structure might give his team an unfair advantage.

Although owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. of the San Francisco 49ers did not attend the NFL’s annual spring meeting, his name came up more than a few times during the two days of discussions that concluded Thursday.

Representatives of the league’s 28 teams used a portion of the meeting to discuss the pros and cons of corporate ownership of sports franchises--something the NFL currently does not allow--a debate sparked by a recent story in Forbes magazine that described DeBartolo’s “secret transfer of ownership” of the 49ers into his father’s real estate company, the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., in late 1986.

And while the concept of corporate ownership in general will be considered by the NFL’s finance committee, which is expected to produce a report in October, the 49er ownership situation will be dealt with during a hearing next month in Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s office, Tagliabue said Thursday. He said the hearing will be held in mid-June, but could not provide a specific date.

The commissioner has the authority to fine a club as much as $500,000 or take away draft choices for violating the league’s constitution or bylaws.

In its story, the magazine reported that most NFL owners did not know of the DeBartolo Corp.’s ownership of the 49ers, winners of the last two Super Bowls, until Forbes’ reporters informed them of it, and that the situation has caused a “furor” among the owners. Two owners, Philadelphia’s Norman Braman and New England’s Victor Kiam, were quoted in the article as saying that the situation could lead to the destruction of the league.

The argument against corporate ownership is that such an arrangement would give a corporate owner deeper pockets than other owners, thus hurting the league’s competitive balance.

Indeed, DeBartolo’s father, Edward DeBartolo Sr., has amassed a personal fortune worth, according to Forbes, $1.4 billion through DeBartolo Corp., and the 49ers had a payroll that was reportedly 30% higher than the league average last year. DeBartolo Corp. reportedly owns or manages nearly 10% of all the shopping mall space in the United States.

But Carmen Policy, 49er executive vice president and attorney, who attended the meeting as the team’s representative, said the ownership transfer was a matter of “structure rather than finances” and was not intended to give the 49ers a competitive advantage--a point he believes he made successfully during the meeting.

“My sense is that even the (rival) owners who complained are not interested in retribution,” he said.

Tagliabue appeared to feel the same way, saying that he thinks it’s “doubtful” the 49ers gained a competitive advantage through the change in ownership structure.

“(The change) was done on Dec. 30, 1986,” he said, “and prior to that time, the 49ers had won two Super Bowls, four or five division championships. They had developed a player named Joe Montana and a coach named Bill Walsh under the good, old-fashioned system (of NFL ownership). So, I am skeptical (that the ownership change led to a competitive advantage).”