Peninsula Oilers baseball, a summer fixture celebrating 45 consecutive years of providing summer entertainment, baseball instruction, and financial support to community organizations and scholarships to graduating senior, is facing financial deficits and fiscal uncertainty that threatens the future of summer baseball on the Kenai.
The Oilers baseball club, in recent years, has functioned on a tight budget which now includes only one paid, part-time office manager; a seasonal baseball general manager, a seasonally-contracted coaching staff and a staff to run Old Town Bingo, the Oilers primary funding source.
The Peninsula Oilers due to a lack of gaming revenues from Old Town Bingo and a lack of monies produced through marketing, sales and donations are facing financial deficits which threaten the 2019 baseball season and are on the verge of withdrawing from the Alaska Baseball League season for 2020.
Peninsula Oilers Board of Directors President Mike Tice…
Tice: “We actually don’t know how we are going to pay our way through this season; pay the coaches and players way to come up (to Alaska). That ends up being well over $35,000 to fly them here and back. We don’t know how we’re going to do that at the moment.”
Completing the 2019 season is the first priority. What happens in 2020 will depend on the community and additional funding.
Tice on 2020 season…
“Our tentative plan right now would be to take next season (2010) off and to possibly bank some savings; we don’t want to do that but it’s looking like we’re going to have to if we don’t get a lot of support from the community.”
The Peninsula Oilers main sources of funding have traditionally been gaming, through Old Town Bingo, and marketing and sales drawing on the local community. Diminished funds from both of those sources now threaten the very existence of Peninsula Oilers baseball.
Tice on bingo income…
” The main sources of funding would be the bingo hall through our gaming permit and the resent law which made smoking inside illegal now is turning out to be pretty painful for us.”
Bingo as a revenue source is also being affected by an aging community of people who actually play bingo; online entertainment and gaming opportunities; and a generational change in how we spend our entertainment dollars.
Tice on economy…
“It seems like the economy is on a little bit of a down turn which is effecting everybody–it is effecting us as well! Our second main source of income would be our advertising. Ball park signs, program ads, as well as, ball park buy-outs; all of those things are down because many of our primary sponsors were the local oil companies and it seems as though there’s really no local oil companies any more. You have to deal with out-of-state corporate or some times out-of-peninsula, Anchorage corporate office. Their funds are limited as well so we are just not getting the same kind of funding that we used to.”
The future of the Peninsula Oilers Baseball Club in jeopardy. Part two of this report will focus on services provided by the Oilers to the community and ways in which the community can get on board to help the Peninsula Oilers.
Contact the Oilers office at 283-7133.
