Big TV bucks drive drop in Cal ticket sales
It’s going to take more than hiring a new coach and winning a few games to boost Cal football’s sagging season-ticket sales.
We were deluged with emails from alumni last week after reporting that Cal had canned coach Sonny Dykes out of a near-panic about plunging season-ticket renewals. They’re down 30 percent in the aftermath of the Golden Bears’ latest uninspiring season.
The Old Blues’ message: It wasn’t so much Dykes or the team’s 5-7 record last year. What’s driving them away are the late-night contests whose starting times aren’t finalized until a few days before the game — all to serve the Pac-12 conference’s new master, its megabucks TV contract.
When these alumni became fans, the typical Cal home game started in the early afternoon on a Saturday. This past season, the juggle for TV time resulted in two late-afternoon home games and three night games — including one on a Friday — which ended so late that fans had practically no time to hustle down to the BART station to catch the last train.
“Who wants to go to a game that gets over at midnight, especially in late October or November when temperatures can get pretty low?” said alumnus Roger Graham.
“I didn’t get to any of the
games,” said Berkeley resident Steve Sperber, who, with his wife, Roberta, had been Cal season-ticket holders for 20 years. “And there is no point in having tickets if that’s what I’m going to do.”
Smitty Schmidt of Alamo said Dykes “is being made a scapegoat to avoid acknowledging the real culprit — the game time problem.”
The game times may be a problem for fans, but those 7:30 p.m. kickoffs are being scheduled to accommodate a TV contract that guarantees Cal $25 million a year. That’s a lot more than the $3.8 million that season-ticket sales brought in this past season, or even the $9.3 million in total ticket revenue.
The contract also guarantees that every Cal game will be televised, either by the Pac-12 Network, ESPN or Fox Sports. That gives the football program consistent national exposure, even if the games are being watched across the country mainly by insomniacs.
In an email to ticket holders in November, Cal Athletic Director Mike Williams said he was “sympathetic” to all those who miss the old days of spending Saturday afternoons at Memorial Stadium watching Cal football “under the sun and blue skies.” But he said the money from the TV contract plays “a key role in the competitive success of every one” of the school’s 30 men’s and women’s sports teams.
He also said the TV deal “has provided significantly more national exposure for our football program, approximately 43 percent more households per game.”
Plus, he said, being slotted in more night matchups is a sign of “a position of strength.”
Still, Williams said he had “voiced our concerns with both ESPN and Fox about night games and all of the challenges they present — from travel times for the welfare of our student-athletes to the overall fan experience.”
Bottom line: Williams said he would “unequivocally ... always advocate for what’s in the best interest of our program and for our student-athletes.”
Pac-12 spokesman Erik Hardenbergh said that when Cal and the other Pac-12 schools signed off on the 12-year TV contract in 2012, they agreed that their goal was to generate “more revenue and exposure” for their programs. The networks slot nighttime games on the West Coast to fill out their schedules.
“Everyone understood that going in,” Hardenbergh said. For fans, he said, “I think it’s an adjustment period.”
Adjust this, some Cal fans reply.
“It’s all a money grab controlled by people who don’t care a whit about folks like me,” said Blair Jackson of Oakland, class of ’75. “You’ve lost me, Bears!” Off the blotter: Incoming SFPD Chief William Scott won’t be sworn in until next Monday, but changes are already under way around San Francisco’s ever-political Police Department.
First up, the election of Julius Turman as the new Police Commission president.
Turman, a labor lawyer, has been a bridge builder on the commission ever since joining it in 2011. And he looks to stay the course.
“We have a great deal of work that needs to be done,” Turman said. “We need to continue the reforms that we currently have in place on the use of force, and we’ve got to get the training up and going.”
That work has some wondering why commission President Suzy Loftus, the former prosecutor who spearheaded much of the reform drive, opted to quit the commission.
Fact is, Loftus was facing an uncertain future in her day job at the state Department of Justice after the exit of her mentor, former Attorney General Kamala Harris, for the U.S. Senate.
Her landing spot wasn’t too rocky — she’ll be making $190,000 a year on the Sheriff ’s Department’s legal team — but it did create a conflict of interest with her commission post.
For the Police Officers Association, Loftus was a convenient face to attach to its anticommission crusade over such issues as the city’s ban on firing at suspects in moving cars and its refusal to arm cops with stun guns.
So moving on has the added bonus for Loftus of taking her out of the POA’s spotlight while she contemplates a possible run for district attorney.
The POA’s search for someone else to pick on will be headed up by union President Martin Halloran, who has decided to put off his planned retirement and sign up for another three-year hitch.
“No one came forward to take the job,” Halloran said. “Which either means everyone is happy with me or nobody wants the job — or both.”
In other words, the war between the police union and Police Commission is going to continue — with the new police chief right in the middle.