Home of the World Cup? : Southland Making Its Case to Become Site of ’94 Championship Game
Jolted out of its inertia by Mayor Tom Bradley, Greater Los Angeles now prepares to tackle resistance from abroad, charges of favoritism in this country and construction at two major stadiums in an attempt to become for one summer month in 1994 the world’s soccer capital.
A group representing Los Angeles and Pasadena has submitted a bid to the organizing committee, World Cup USA 1994, that could bring as many as seven games each, of one of the world’s most prestigious sporting events, to the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum.
Although between 21 and 23 other cities also are expected to apply before Wednesday’s deadline for a varying number of games in the 52-game tournament, officials of the organizing committee and the sport’s international federation, FIFA, say they expect either the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum, or perhaps a combination of the two, to be among 12 venues selected in December to play a World Cup role.
Not content, however, as just a potential member of the cast, Los Angeles/Pasadena is bidding for the championship game to be played in either the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum. Based on estimates from the 1990 World Cup in Italy by FIFA’s marketing agent, International Sports & Leisure of Lucerne, Switzerland, that game could be seen by more than 1 billion people in 167 countries.
Two Florida cities, Miami and Tampa, also have submitted bids for the final, which will be awarded in June of 1992. Others expressing interest include Washington, Dallas, Kansas City and Charlotte, N.C.
If only because of its track record, the Rose Bowl is considered the early favorite. It demonstrated its ability to stage a world-class soccer tournament during the 1984 Olympic Games, which attracted the three largest crowds--101,799; 100,374, and 97,451--for the sport in U.S. history.
There also is sentiment among some bidders that the Rose Bowl has an edge because of the composition of the organizing committee. Chairman of the Board Alan Rothenberg, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chairman Chuck Cale and President Scott LeTellier are veterans of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Rothenberg and Cale still live in Los Angeles.
Tempering that, however, are indications that FIFA prefers the ultramodern, soccer-friendly Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami.
FIFA spokesman Guido Tognoni said at a news conference in Washington last month that the Rose Bowl is unsuitable for the final, and while he was not so adamant after learning, during a recent visit to Los Angeles, of the stadium’s planned refurbishment, he made it clear that Pasadena is not his first choice.
“Everybody expects the United States to present the best stadiums,” he said. “Joe Robbie is so fantastic, a super, super stadium. The Rose Bowl has a lot of tradition, but you can’t live on tradition. Let’s not forget that we’re at the end of the 20th Century.”
Dick Sargent, de facto executive director of the Los Angeles/Pasadena bid committee, said he does not believe Tognoni spoke on behalf of FIFA’s leadership.
“I think that’s an individual comment,” Sargent said. “We’ve been assured by FIFA that it’s not their intent to exclude the Rose Bowl. Certainly, there are other stadiums that are more state of the art. Obviously, the advantages we have are in experience, seating capacity and the ability to pretty much guarantee better weather than anyone else can.”
Sargent, who was the LAOOC’s vice president of operations and, unofficially, Peter Ueberroth’s right-hand man, became associated with the bid committee last winter, shortly after Mayor Bradley determined in October that the campaign needed recharging.
The L.A. Sports Council, a private, nonprofit corporation created to attract sporting events to the area, initiated the bid even before FIFA voted in 1988 to award the World Cup to the United States for the first time. But the Sports Council’s effort stalled last year for a number of reasons, not the least significant of which was the difficulty involved in raising $255,000 required by the organizing committee as a deposit to bid for a full complement of games at the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum.
Considering that Sports Council members, including many major corporations, already pay between $1,000 and $2,500 a year in membership fees, President David Simon said he did not feel comfortable asking them for more money. Yet, without their contributions, he said alternatives for funding were limited.
But LeTellier, a Newport Beach lawyer until he moved to Washington two years ago as the organizing committee president, said he also detected a lack of commitment from the Sports Council, particularly in comparison to other cities.
While Simon and Sports Council Chairman John Argue said they have always been enthusiastic, they acknowledge taking a more realistic look at the economic pluses and minuses of the bid after realizing during a visit to Italy for last summer’s World Cup that some cities did not reap anticipated financial bonanzas.
“Some cities look at the World Cup and say, ‘Oh boy, now we can get in the international sports pages,’ ” Simon said. “Here, we’ve done that before. So we say, ‘Let’s take a closer look at it.’ Before we get involved in an event, it has to make economic sense for the community. Others might not consider that. They might say, ‘It’s a prestige event, and we want it.’ ”
While the Sports Council contemplated, City Hall moved in. Jane Ellison, a former LAOOC attorney who serves as legal counsel to the Mayor, met with Simon to discuss the problems. She said he suggested greater civic involvement, which she reported to Bradley. He agreed, forming a 51-member committee that includes, among others, representation from the Los Angeles and Pasadena city governments, the L.A. Tourist and Convention Bureau and the Sports Council.
It was a fortuitous move. In December, the NFL reopened bidding for the 1993 Super Bowl in expectation that the game would be moved from Phoenix because of the controversy over Arizona’s negative vote on a proposed Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Having represented Anaheim, Pasadena and Los Angeles in the original bid, the Sports Council reconstructed the campaign and, in a vote by NFL owners in March, won the 1993 Super Bowl for the Rose Bowl. If the Sports Council had been preparing World Cup and Super Bowl bids at the same time, Simon said one or the other, or both, would have suffered.
“The separate committee idea was good for us,” he said. “If the matter hadn’t come up independently, we might have recommended it ourselves. The important thing to us is that the job get done.”
By all accounts, the job is getting done, although that does not mean the committee had an easier time than the Sports Council would have had in raising the $255,000 deposit. There were contributions of $25,000 or more from a few corporations, but Argue, vice chairman of the committee, said there also were numerous small donations from soccer fans.
“L.A. is L.A.,” Sargent said. “There’s a lot going on that people are asked to give money for. But when it comes down to the wire, it gets done.”
He said he is optimistic. “But it’s not a given by any stretch of the imagination,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
One complication could be the availability of the Coliseum. The projected renovation of the facility is scheduled to begin next January and end in the late spring or early summer of 1993. But if there is a delay in obtaining approval for the project, construction might not begin until January of 1993 and not end until the late spring or early summer of 1994.
With the World Cup dates expected to be set from mid-June to mid-July, the organizing committee might not want to take a chance that the Coliseum would be unfinished. It could award games to each stadium, then move all of them to the Rose Bowl if the Coliseum is not completed. But, organizing committee officials said, it is also possible that the Coliseum will be bypassed entirely if its status is not clear by this December.
The construction planned for the Rose Bowl is comparatively minor, involving structural improvements, adding luxury boxes and modernizing the press box, and should be completed by September of 1992.
“I think they know themselves that the Rose Bowl, as it is today, is not the stadium to host the final,” Tognoni said. “I think they realize they have to make some effort. They tell me Los Angeles is ready to make that effort.
“The Rose Bowl has a special aura. If you want to have the final in Los Angeles, it could be the solution. The organizing committee has a very strong L.A. lobby.”
Despite perceptions to the contrary, Cale said he and Rothenberg, the organizing committee’s highest-ranking officials, will work neither for nor against Los Angeles.
They had a meeting last fall with Ellison and Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani, but Cale said one reason for that was to assure them that the bid process was not stacked against Los Angeles. He said the Sports Council was concerned that the organizers would be so intent on displaying their neutrality that Los Angeles would be held to higher standards than other cities.
“If I said I didn’t want Los Angeles to have as many games as possible, I’d be a fraud,” Cale said in a recent interview at the organizing committee’s Century City offices. “As Angelenos, both Alan and I feel L.A. is a wonderful place. We think the World Cup here would be tremendously successful.
“But one thing Alan and I have made very clear is that it’s not a lock. No, Los Angeles has to step up like everyone else. It has to show that it wants to make this happen.”
Ultimately, however, the final might happen in the Rose Bowl simply because of its size. It has a seating capacity of 103,553 compared to 75,355 for Joe Robbie Stadium. A proposed new stadium in Washington, which could be completed in time for the World Cup, would seat no more than 80,000.
Unlike most revenues from sponsorship, licensing and television contracts, money from ticket sales belongs to the organizing committee instead of FIFA.
“We’re not hiding the fact that if you put Joe Robbie next to the Rose Bowl, Joe Robbie has the better facilities,” said LeTellier, organizing committee president. “But there’s the question of the 25,000 extra seats in the Rose Bowl. That means nothing to FIFA. But you’re talking millions of dollars, and that’s the only way we have of making money.”
Tognoni said the final decision belongs to FIFA. “But we know there are 100,000 seats in the Rose Bowl,” he said. “We will find a consensus.”
