Davis Testifies Co-Owners of Raiders Made Millions

In the three years after he moved the Raiders back to Oakland, team owner Al Davis testified Thursday that co-owners earned $24 million and he pocketed more than $7 million in what he claimed was a financial disaster.

Davis said cash payments -- one of the attractions of moving to Oakland -- surpassed the nearly $6 million the team’s owners earned in their last three years in Los Angeles.

The lawyer representing the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum said the figures show that Davis got richer from the move, contrary to his claims that he was defrauded in a bad business deal by stadium officials who lured him back on a false promise of a packed stadium.

“This was the first time this morning when people learned how much Mr. Davis earned personally from all this,” lawyer James Brosnahan said outside court. “You would think that listening to him talk for the last five years that he was going to be homeless.”

Davis revealed distribution payments to co-owners during cross-examination in his $1-billion fraud case against the Coliseum, its lead negotiator, Ed DeSilva, and the defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen.

He has insisted during most of his five days on the witness stand that he has lost money in Oakland and the value of the team has plummeted. He said it would have been worth more if he moved to Baltimore or the NFL hadn’t killed a deal for him to build a stadium in the Los Angeles area.

“Right now, we’re 30th in the league of 32 teams in revenue,” Davis said outside of court. “We’re struggling for our life.”

Davis’ lawyer said the payments Davis and his seven limited partners received were a fraction of what they would have earned if the stadium had sold out as promised.

Davis, who turns 74 today, is the team’s managing general partner. He owns 38% of the team he joined in 1963 as coach and general manager, gradually accumulating shares after being elevated to partner.

In questioning that has appeared to irritate and amuse Davis, he has repeatedly maintained that he was guaranteed a sellout by stadium officials. He said the promise could not be put in writing because taxpayers would revolt -- as they did when the team prepared to move to Oakland in 1990 -- if there were guarantees.

Davis acknowledged on Thursday that he should not have relied on Oakland officials to sell tickets for the games.

“I admit that I made the mistake,” Davis said at a news conference in 1996 that was played for jurors in Sacramento County Superior Court. “I should have pre-sold it to know whether it could be done or not.”

Davis said he was unaware of problems with ticket sales when he signed the 15-year deal to return on Aug. 7, 1995. He said he wasn’t told thousands of licenses to buy season tickets were in limbo because credit cards had been rejected and checks had bounced.

However, notes taken by stadium officials at a meeting with Davis in the hours before he signed the deal at a news conference showed that others had jotted down his concerns along with numbers of seats that remained unsold.

“I don’t know when these notes were written, but Al Davis was in the room and these things were not said,” Davis testified.