Mazzone Got More Tickets : Rose Bowl: UCLA booster bought total of 733 tickets from five other Pacific 10 Conference schools.

Angelo Mazzone, the UCLA booster who purchased 4,000 of the school’s allotment of 1994 Rose Bowl tickets, also bought enough tickets from other Pacific 10 Conference schools to control nearly 5% of all tickets to the game.

Mazzone bought 733 tickets from five other Pac-10 schools, sometimes making a donation for the opportunity, a Times investigation has shown.

Wisconsin Atty. Gen. James E. Doyle, whose office is investigating the UCLA ticket sale and how it might have forced University of Wisconsin fans to pay exorbitant prices, said Mazzone’s additional purchases from other Pac-10 schools were troubling.

“If that information is correct, it certainly makes it worse in my eyes because it shows that this is an individual that was attempting to buy up and speculate in tickets,� Doyle said.

Mazzone has yet to comment publicly on any of his ticket purchases and did not return phone calls Friday.

UCLA’s decision to sell Mazzone such a large block of tickets--approved personally by Chancellor Charles E. Young--has angered UCLA and Wisconsin fans who either failed to get tickets for the game or paid exorbitant prices.

Last week Young apologized for the transaction but said UCLA officials underestimated the demand and feared they would be stuck with unsold tickets. Demand for tickets for the game, which marked the Badgers’ first Rose Bowl appearance in 31 years, was the highest in recent memory.

According to a Times investigation, Mazzone bought:

--350 tickets from Arizona State.

--232 tickets from Oregon.

--80 tickets from Oregon State.

--51 tickets from Cal.

--20 tickets from Arizona.

To get the 733 tickets, Mazzone had to, in some cases, make donations to the school involved. Mazzone, a former associate athletic director at UCLA, made a $100,000 donation to the UCLA athletic scholarship fund when he was allowed to buy the Bruin tickets.

Since each of the eight Pac-10 schools outside of Southern California received 500 tickets, that means Mazzone controlled 733 of the available 4,000 tickets, or 18.33% of that market.

He did not buy any tickets from USC, Stanford or either Washington school.

The 4,000 taken from UCLA’s allotment of 41,586 as the Pac-10 team in the game represents almost 10% of that total. So, overall, Mazzone controlled 4,733 tickets, which is 4.68% of the 101,237 tickets sold for the 1994 game between UCLA and Wisconsin.

The controversy began when 1,000 or more Wisconsin fans wound up without tickets promised by ticket agencies. It triggered a class-action suit in Wisconsin and an investigation by Doyle.

Doyle said the Wisconsin investigation is continuing and the spokesman for the California attorney general said its own probe into the matter is ongoing.

Mazzone paid face value of $46 for the Rose Bowl tickets he bought. Some tickets close to game time were being sold for as much as $1,000. The Times has reported that the majority of Mazzone’s tickets were purchased by the Brooks Ticket agency in Los Angeles, but it has not been established how much he received. Ticket scalping is legal in California except on the premises of the event.

AB 3083 by Assemblywoman Dede Alpert (D--Coronado), passed this week by the California Assembly, would regulate ticket brokering. It next goes to the State Senate, with the hope that passage would be in place in time for this summer’s World Cup soccer tournament.

UC spokesman Mike Alva said Friday that the office of the General Counsel of the Regents is examining the circumstances as a result of the class-action suit filed by Wisconsin fans.

“As part of the normal process for the general counsel’s office handling a lawsuit, the office is conducting fact-finding,� said Alva. “There is not any investigation or review outside of the scope of the lawsuit.�

At Cal, Mazzone has bought Rose Bowl tickets for three years, but the number he received for the ’94 game was far below his previous orders, said Jesus Mena, a spokesman for the school.

Mazzone did not make a donation to the school this time, but, in previous years, he bought most of the available tickets and made small donations, records show.

He bought 300 of the 500 tickets for the 1992 Rose Bowl game and donated $2,300 to $4,300 to the athletic department, Mena said.

For the 1993 Rose Bowl, Mazzone bought 277 of the 500-ticket allotment and donated $550 to $1,300.

Former Cal athletic director Bob Bockrath said that Mazzone, whom he had met in athletic circles a decade before, approached him a couple of weeks before the 1992 game about buying unsold tickets.

“The first year he bought the ones we couldn’t sell,� said Bockrath, now athletic director at Texas Tech. “If you’re not in the game, people don’t have an interest in going.�

The next year, Bockrath said, he called Mazzone, offering tickets to the 1993 game. He said Mazzone didn’t take all the available tickets and the rest were donated to a church youth group.

The news that Mazzone bought additional tickets to the ’94 game beyond the previously reported 4,000 further alarmed Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany.

“That’s interesting, very interesting,� he said. “This just adds to the substance and the perception of a problem that already exists. I’m concerned. We need to tighten up those tickets that we have for both conferences before we start offering them to ticket buyers.

“Some years the supply exceeds the demand. Some years, the demand exceeds the supply. But we have to show some discretion. I can’t see the ticket buyer receiving priority over 21 schools (the total of the two conferences). That’s wrong.�

Delany also said the overall allocation of tickets, just under 51,000 to the Pac-10 and 21,000 to the Big Ten, is wrong.

“We need something more equitable,� he said. “This is not 1950. We are supposed to be equal partners with the Rose Bowl. If it’s not going to be equal, we ought to at least do a better job of making it closer.

“And we have to monitor the marketplace better. The last thing we need is to have the scalpers and the ticket agents getting priority.

“The Big Ten has not been taken care of, but we never imagined a situation like this. We are going to have some decisions to make, but we hope to get it remedied. Our conferences share so much, this has to be done in fairness to the followers of both. We’re talking about the fabric of the relationship of both conferences.�

Times staff writers Wendy Witherspoon and Rick Holguin contributed to this story.