Experts Testify Anaheim Hardly Lost Any Revenue

Two expert witnesses testified Monday that the city of Anaheim lost virtually no revenue from the team’s name change to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Earlier in the Orange County Superior Court trial, Laren Ukman, an expert witness for the city, said the name change could cost the city of Anaheim as much as $373 million worth of lost national media exposure on sports websites, scoreboards and graphics on major league broadcasts.

But Richard Gilbert, a sports economist who teaches at California, said there was no relationship between the value of these “impressions” and any benefit to the city.

“If they were really worth so much, you’d see a lot of economic activity around them,” Gilbert said. “I’m not aware of activity related to the impressions.”

The city claims that a carry-over from the 2002 World Series title helped the team set attendance records in 2005, the first year of the name change. But a Gilbert study of World Series champions over the last 25 years showed that by the third year, there was no carry-over effect. On average, Gilbert said attendance for World Series winners had decreased by 3% three years after a championship.

“It is my experience that the excitement doesn’t last very long,” he said. “You have to keep on building on it.”

Ukman, of the Chicago sponsorship and marketing agency IEG, testified that Anaheim lost $28 million of exposure last year during the regular season and playoffs on rolling television scoreboards.

But Lon Hatamiya, former secretary of California’s Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency, called that number “ridiculous.”

“If a city had $28 million to use in marketing, they would use it differently,” he said.

Hatamiya suggested the city would use the money to highlight an “iconic destination,” such as an amusement park or a baseball stadium.

“People come to the icon first, not to the city,” he said. “It’s Disneyland they come to. It’s the Angels game they come to.”

If the mere mention of the city’s name helped generate increased tourism, Hatamiya said, then cities such as Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Detroit would be reaping the benefits.

Hatamiya provided a chart that indicated the name change from Anaheim to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim was one of several factors that contributed to a recent surge in Anaheim tourism, which he measured in transient occupancy tax revenue.

“The revenue spiked up,” he said. “If the name change was a negative, revenue would have gone down.”

But when City Atty. Mike Rubin asked how Hatamiya could be sure that Angel attendance was directly responsible for the spike in transient occupancy tax, he said he couldn’t be sure.