Amphitheater Says It’s Laying Off the Top Acts : Entertainment: Pacific in Costa Mesa reports trying to cut its losses by staying out of bidding wars with Irvine Meadows.

Faced with mounting financial losses, owners of Pacific Amphitheatre decided this year to curtail their previously heated bidding for star concert attractions, according to court documents filed this week in a federal antitrust suit aimed at preventing the Pacific from merging with its competitor, Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

“We are a minor operation this year. We have very few acts,” Neil Papiano, a Pacific partner, told government lawyers in a deposition filed with the antitrust suit. Papiano said that in previous years, the Pacific had engaged in escalating bidding wars with Irvine Meadows that pushed performers’ fees so high that losses were inevitable.

For 1990, Papiano said, he and his partners decided “we would not pay acts when we knew without question we were going to lose money. In the past, we have done that just because we want to continue to get in the act.”

Papiano said it previously was considered important to bring in acts, even at a loss, to maintain the Pacific’s standing as “a major theater” and a “player” in the Orange County concert market. In addition, Papiano said, “in some instances we booked soft (rock) acts, very frankly, to show the neighbors we weren’t just booking hard-rock acts.” (The Pacific is fighting a suit by neighbors who have complained about excessive noise from concerts.)

But Papiano said he and his main partner, the Nederlander Organization, which books the shows at the Pacific, “decided we would try not to give money away any more.”

Robert Geddes, managing partner of the rival Irvine Meadows, questioned Friday whether the Pacific has actually backed off in the bidding for acts.

“They’re still putting in their bids, they’re just being less effective” in landing attractions, Geddes said. “I suppose if I were being less effective, I’d want to tell people I wasn’t trying as hard.”

So far, the Pacific has booked a total of 27 concerts for the current concert season, according to amphitheater spokeswoman Laura Gold. Last year, considered a fallow one for the concert industry nationwide, the Pacific staged 36 shows. In 1988, a boom year in the industry, the amphitheater hosted a record 55 shows.

According to a document supplied by the Pacific Amphitheatre, in 1989, Irvine Meadows ticket income totaled $8.3 million, for nearly an 11% share of a $76-million Los Angeles-Orange County concert market. The Pacific reported $5.5 million in ticket sales, for a 7.3% market share.

Irvine Meadows has booked a total of 39 shows so far this year, according to Matt Curto, the amphitheater’s director of operations. Irvine matched the Pacific’s total of 36 in 1989, and had 45 shows in 1988.

According to testimony in an unrelated trial over neighboring residents’ noise complaints, the Pacific lost more than $2 million in 1989, and the amphitheater partners have pumped $17 million into the operation to keep it afloat through its bitter, seven-year battle with Irvine Meadows. Members of the Irvine Meadows partnership also have said in the past that their facility has lost money due to the heated bidding for acts.

Those losses were the impetus for the proposed merger between the two amphitheaters. But the U.S. Justice Department stepped in Thursday to block the merger, contending in its suit that a union of the Pacific and Irvine Meadows would turn the Orange County concert market into an illegal monopoly.

After the suit was filed Thursday, the parties involved agreed not to carry out the merger and to maintain independent operations at least until Sept. 24, when a hearing is scheduled on the Justice Department’s request for a preliminary injunction to ban the merger as monopolistic.

Under the merger proposal, the Nederlander Organization, which books and operates the Pacific, would take control of both venues. Such an arrangement, Papiano has said, would make the market more competitive: exclusive booking agreements now prevailing at both amphitheaters (Nederlander promotes all shows at the Pacific and Avalon Attractions is the sole promoter at Irvine Meadows) would be broken, and any promoter would be able to put on shows at either facility. The Justice Department suit contends that two amphitheaters under one management could result in higher prices for concert tickets, higher expenses for promoters, and fewer opportunities for Orange County music fans to see the shows.

Donald M. Koll, the Newport Beach developer who holds a controlling interest in Irvine Meadows, had agreed to the Pacific’s merger overture before the Justice Department stepped in, according to court documents. Meanwhile, Geddes, a minority partner who opposes the merger, has teamed with record industry magnate Irving Azoff in a rival bid to acquire Irvine Meadows.

In his deposition, Papiano said that although Koll is losing money at Irvine Meadows, Avalon Attractions, the promoter that books the amphitheater, “is making a ton of money.” Avalon is the leading independent concert promoter in Southern California, with revenue of more than $30 million last year, according to documents in the suit. The Nederlander Organization, based in New York, is a much larger entity that owns theaters and books concerts across the country.

Geddes, who owns half of Avalon Attractions as well as a 25% interest in Irvine Meadows, vehemently denied Papiano’s contention that Avalon makes money from the Irvine-Pacific competition, while the partners who own Irvine Meadows get stuck with losses.

“Avalon absolutely does not make money at Irvine Meadows. To suggest that it does is uninformed babbling,” Geddes said. Despite his interest in both companies, Geddes said, Avalon has “an arm’s-length deal” with Irvine Meadows that requires it to pay rental fees to the facility’s owners.

In other documents filed in the antitrust case, booking agents who negotiate concert deals for performers said that a merger would lead to deep cuts in artists’ fees.

“If Irvine Meadows and Pacific Amphitheatre were to combine, the compensation to artists could drop by as much as 50%,” said Thomas Ross of Creative Artists Agency. Ross, filing a statement in opposition of the merger, said that “performers have consistently received better deals for playing Pacific Amphitheatre or Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre than from almost any other market in the country, including Los Angeles.”

According to promoters on both sides of the amphitheater competition, the hottest-drawing acts can command guarantees of more than $200,000 for a single night.