Unpaid Bill May Sideline Pasadena Super Bowl Bid : Football: City officials say they’re owed $1 million for last game. The dispute clouds prospects for 1998 event.

Pasadena city officials are threatening to block a bid to hold the 1998 Super Bowl in the Rose Bowl unless they get some answers about where the profits from this year’s National Football League championship game went.

With the NFL scheduled to decide between Pasadena and Atlanta for Super Bowl XXXII at its annual meeting Oct. 27, Pasadena City Council members are demanding to know why the city has not been paid $1 million promised for use of the stadium in January.

“We’ve been talking about this for 10 months,” Councilman Chris Holden said Friday. “So far, they haven’t even thrown us a bone.”

The city’s dispute is not with the NFL but with the Los Angeles Sports Council, the nonprofit corporation that negotiates to bring major sporting events to the area. Pasadena officials say the council had promised the $1 million for use of the city-owned stadium for Super Bowl XXVII, in which Dallas beat Buffalo 52-17--but that the city has yet to receive any compensation.

Officials of the Los Angeles Sports Council said they could not make the payment because revenues from the game were less than expected.

“But Pasadena did very well by it,” Sports Council Chairman John Argue said, citing the estimated $182 million pumped into the regional economy, including an infusion of sales tax and transit occupancy tax revenues.

The NFL paid for $65,000 in permanent improvements to the Rose Bowl and contributed about $100,000 to local charities.

Argue said that attempts to squeeze payments out of the Sports Council by withholding support for the 1998 bid could hand the game to Atlanta. The Sports Council last week offered the city $111,000 in cash and $89,000 in accounts receivable as payment for the game played Jan. 31.

Argue said that the $1-million offer had been contingent on the sale of 2,500 game tickets, which the Sports Council sought to package with gifts and admissions to other events. But poor economic conditions reduced sales, which were also hurt because some tickets were for seats in undesirable locations, he said. “You can’t package end zone tickets with hospitality offerings,” he said. “People just won’t buy them.”

The ticket sales wound up bringing in $2.7 million rather than the expected $4 million, he said.

The issue has divided the Pasadena City Council, which is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to authorize city staff to enter negotiations with the NFL for the use of the 101,000-seat stadium.

Holden and fellow Councilman William Paparian have asked for a full audit of Sports Council expenses.