L.A. Invitational Meet Canceled Over Finances

The Los Angeles Invitational indoor track meet, once a premier event in a vibrant local track and field scene but more recently a relic in a bleak landscape, has been canceled next year because father-and-son promoters Al and Don Franken couldn’t find sponsors, they said Friday. They estimated their losses at as much as $50,000 if the meet had been held as scheduled.

The L.A. Invitational, which made its debut in 1960 and is the second-oldest indoor meet in the U.S. after the Millrose Games, was the only remaining elite indoor meet on the West Coast. The 2004 competition was scheduled for Feb. 8 at the Sports Arena, but the Frankens said they couldn’t make the numbers work and keep their losses as small as they’ve been in recent years.

Sunkist was the meet’s title sponsor from 1970 through 1995. After its withdrawal, the Frankens kept the event alive by cobbling together a network of smaller sponsors and persuading the Sports Arena to reduce its rent.

By the Frankens’ count, 105 Olympic gold medalists have competed in the L.A. Invitational. However, in recent years most elite athletes have turned to Europe, where they can earn appearance fees of $25,000 or more. In addition, USA Track and Field’s Golden Spike tour has conflicted with the L.A. Invitational.

“It’s a sad day, to be quite frank,” said USC track Coach Ron Allice, who has sent athletes and teams to the meet for years. “It’s been an institution in Los Angeles in the sport of track and field. Al Franken has done so much for track and field and has been so supportive of us all, long before I was at USC.

“In the mid-’60s, before women were getting athletic scholarships, they were running in clubs and Al was giving women opportunities to compete. This has been a passion and a love of his. It isn’t good news.”

Indoor track and field also flourished at the Forum, in San Diego and in the Bay Area. However, those competitions vanished as sponsors departed or directed money to other sports. The Frankens temporarily revived the indoor meet in San Diego in 1999 and 2000. Another group organized an indoor meet at Staples Center in 2001, but that meet was canceled because of a dispute over sponsorship funds and low ticket sales.

“We just made a decision we’d rather wait a year and see if we can stage the meet the way it should be done,” said Don Franken, who hopes to revive it in 2005, perhaps as a charity event. “It’s hard to go from having a title sponsor for 26 years to piecing things together. You need a title sponsor to make these things work. We could have just done the high school meet, but people won’t pay $23 and $10 to see high school athletes....

“The economics have changed so dramatically for track and field the last 20 years. The money for the athletes has doubled or tripled, but the problem is sponsorships have gone the opposite way.”

He said it would have taken $30,000 just to open the doors at the Sports Arena, plus costs for timing equipment, officials, sanction fees and promotions.

“The only thing we’re disappointed about is that with 2,000 high school athletes in the meet, for many of them this was going to be the only chance to run indoors this season and it would have given them great memories,” he said.

Al Franken said he tried different avenues, including inviting world champion 400-meter runner Ana Guevara of Mexico, but she’s not running indoors.

“Even in the halcyon days it was hard to turn a profit because there were 100 athletes and all the expenses associated with that,” he said. “I still believe in the sport and I have so many wonderful memories. We brought Kip Keino to the United States [from Kenya] and he’s such a wonderful human being ....

“We weren’t getting much TV in recent years and other sports were coming on. You need national leadership for the sport to succeed. You can’t do it with just crowds -- you need sponsorship, and we were never well-funded these past few years.”

Don Franken said he was turned down when he requested financial aid from USA Track & Field, the sport’s national governing body. He said no potential backer cited the drug scandals enveloping the sport as a reason for not funding the meet, but he said he believes revelations about athletes’ use of the designer steroid THG and other banned substances have hurt the sport’s image.

Allice said he approached USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett about helping arrange corporate support for the L.A. Invitational but the timing wasn’t right.

“It’s a sad night,” Allice said. “Track keeps getting a black eye and a puffed lip on the drug issue and we’re the ones that want to clean it up. Corporations look at that and say, ‘I don’t know about track and field.’ ”

USATF spokeswoman Jill Geer attributed the lack of support for the meet to a shift of interest in indoor track to the East Coast, while interest in outdoor track has remained high on the West Coast. All four outdoor Golden Spike meets will take place on the West Coast, and the trials for the Athens Olympics will be held in Sacramento in July. “I don’t take this as any sort of barometer for the sport,” she said.

Skip Stolley, vice president of the marketing firm staging and promoting the Millrose Games and head of the group that organized the ill-fated Staples Center meet, paid tribute to the Frankens.

“Al and Don have made major contributions to keeping the sport alive in Southern California, and it’s a sad day when that ends,” said Stolley, whose firm, Pro Sports & Entertainment Inc., has offices in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. “The problem a one-day event has is connecting itself with a series of events in other major markets. That’s one reason USA Track and Field created the Golden Spike tour. It’s much more attractive to TV when you can put something on every week and build an audience.”

Stolley said the crowd of 10,094 at the Home Depot Invitational outdoor meet in Carson in June “was proof positive” there’s a market for track in Los Angeles. He also said he’s in preliminary discussions with Mondo to buy the track it manufactured for the Staples Center indoor meet and use it for indoor meets in Philadelphia and Washington in 2005. Seattle and San Diego are other potential sites later, he said.