Season Tickets

Confident that the Los Angeles Raiders will move to Sacramento, thousands of fans are scrambling for a chance to buy season tickets to a stadium that exists only on blueprints. The rush began after Tuesday's unanimous City Council vote to use $50 million in public funds to lure the Raiders to the capital, said Mike Seward, vice president of Lukenbill Enterprises. "The calls have probably numbered in the low thousands in the last two days," Seward said.

Mission accomplished, Tacoma Stars coach Keith Weller came down Sunday after five days atop a 30-foot-high platform in a shopping mall parking lot. Weller, 45, climbed aboard the 6-by-12-foot platform last Tuesday to draw attention to the Major Soccer League team's push to sell season tickets. Team owners imposed July 30 deadline to sell a total of 4,000 season tickets, or, they said, the Stars could go under.

Ethics reforms proposed by the mayor's special commission this week would force Los Angeles politicians to give up unofficial fringe benefits that money often cannot buy, such as choice season tickets to Lakers basketball games.

Dodger season ticket-holders who paid for playoff game tickets will either be issued refund checks or they can request that the club apply the money toward their 1992 season tickets, the Dodgers announced in a letter to season ticket-holders. In a letter sent in August, the club indicated that if the Dodgers did not qualify for the playoffs, money sent for playoff tickets would automatically be credited to season ticket-holders' 1992 accounts. A refund option was not offered.

Upon hearing that the Raiders were returning to Oakland, their fans promptly asked: "How do I get tickets?" Within 18 hours of the announcement that the Raiders had signed a letter of intent to move back, more than 27,000 people had flooded phone lines providing information on how to purchase season tickets. Fans can call a toll-free number to get on the mailing list for season ticket applications or pick up an application at the Coliseum on Thursday.

A 26-year-old Australian who flew to Los Angeles to watch a Laker championship game was arrested and charged with defrauding basketball fans out of $55,000 for nonexistent playoff tickets he offered over the Internet, authorities said Tuesday. Scott Raymond Thomas of New South Wales was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday. Police had been investigating Thomas for seven months and had been tipped to his travel plans by Australian police.