What a Bargain It Is for Anaheim Arena : But if Disney Brings Hockey, Why Not Basketball?

The Walt Disney Co. is both the salvation and the master of the new Anaheim Arena. It took the troubled facility from lowly white elephant status to exalted home of Mighty Ducks quicker than you can say, “Call a news conference.”

It decided to bring in a professional hockey team when there were no tenants in sight for the new building, and the city was looking mournfully at the entire $2.5-million annual obligation to the arena manager, Ogden Entertainment Co., if no major sports teams came on board.

But in saving the arena, the entertainment giant also dropped a net around it. The contract between Disney and Ogden gives the hockey team owner one of the most lucrative arena contracts anywhere.

Disney gets a huge share of hockey revenues, and stands to take a sizable cut from other teams. For example, the provision that allows Disney to have significant control over sales of premium season tickets and most advertising is said to be a deterrent to the luring of a National Basketball Assn. franchise.

Already, the Continental Indoor Soccer League, based in Los Angeles, has rejected a deal to put a team in Anaheim and will send it to Atlanta, arguing exactly that--the Disney deal made soccer unfeasible. Disney holds a tight leash on premium seats revenue, public address system advertisements, and even who might advertise.

Although the soccer franchise actually had refused to sign its agreement before Disney came to the rescue, the question remains: What of other teams that might consider coming to Anaheim, and what of the city’s obligation to pay Ogden the remainder of the obligation in the absence of a basketball franchise?

Beggars can’t be choosers. But the city has bought time, too, now that it and Ogden have agreed to waive for three years the remaining $1.5 million annual fee the city faced because it had only one major team.

And given the reprieve, one solution to the second major team problem may be no farther away than the solution to the first one, which was right across town. There may be other answers of course, but none so readily apparent.

Perhaps after a season or two of Mighty Ducks on ice, Disney will hear the call of NBA basketball. The idea of a hockey franchise made sense for Disney precisely because of all the other things it had going on in Anaheim. One attraction serves to build interest and attention for another, and so on.

Under a similar scenario, a limitation imposed by the favorable contract deal on the building’s drawing power could be transformed into an asset, just as Disney’s other business interests in Anaheim provided a place in the destination-resort strategy for a hockey franchise.

While Disney’s deal may seem ridiculously favorable to some, remember that Anaheim sports history has turned on deals involving the facilities of pro teams. The Angels are here because they felt they needed to move from Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to greener pastures in Anaheim Stadium. The Rams abandoned the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, also for Anaheim.

If Disney hockey is profitable, as some think it will be soon, and if interest is generated, the arena will look better and better as a place for pro basketball, perhaps Disney’s own franchise. That might add to Anaheim’s prestige as a sporting center, which would be no small thing as older cities struggle to keep long-established franchises. And most important, it could make the city’s dicey investment in a new indoor building look like a shrewd long-term gamble after all.