Businesses drool for World Cup soccer pacts totaling $100 million.

Chasing $100 million in contracts from the World Cup organizing committee, companies nationwide have intensified their courting of committee executives, following the June 29 allocation of games among American cities for the 1994 soccer championship.

The Century City-based World Cup USA 1994 Inc. is making key contracting and marketing decisions to launch the world's top spectator event, now that its executives have firm dates and locations in hand.

Pitches to print programs, cater parties or handcuff out-of-control fans streamed in with new vigor from across the country last week, they said.

Special opportunities await Southland vendors of all stripes, thanks to this city's success: L.A. won eight games, more than any other city, including the momentous semi-final and final matches. They should generate several hundred million dollars in sales for local hotels, shops and other businesses.

Despite L.A.'s twin black eyes -- riots and earthquakes -- a realization is dawning that the 52-game nationwide elimination will crescendo in an unprecedented sports-and-commerce bonanza at the Pasadena Rose Bowl, where all eight games will be played. The final alone is expected to generate a 1-billion-plus TV audience, many times Super Bowl viewership.

The national committee, formed four years ago, is headed by L.A. attorney Alan I. Rothenberg. (A separate L.A. group successfully bid for the specific games, under the leadership of Southern California Edison Co. Chairman John Bryson. That group may now dissolve or take on duties to build community support to host the games, said sources.)

Rothenberg's staff last week said heightened interest in the World Cup is not all commercial. It included potential sponsors, volunteers and especially ticket buyers.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to be involved in the most prestigious sporting event in the world," said Charles D. Kenny, managing director of the committee. Organizing the World Cup's 15th championship series, the first to be held in the United States, involves 140 nations.

For businesses, the commercial opportunities run from paying a premium for choice tickets to capturing some of the more than $100 million in contracts Kenny estimates will be let by December.

Kenny said the committee has sole authority to award all contracts except those connected with tickets. Those need approval from FIFA, the world's governing body for soccer competition.

Kenny said offers are coming from caterers, limousine operators, advertising firms and a bevy of other services.

Other companies, like tour operators, will not seek contracts. Instead they want to buy blocks of tickets, merchandising rights or other items to make bucks off the event.

The non-profit committee is anticipating some $200 million in revenues from the multi-year activities related to the '94 games.

Commercial interest from many quarters is perhaps turning the 50-employee operation into one of the hotter business games in town.

Prompted by Los Angeles's coup -- Detroit, for instance, got only four games, all first-round -- the committee began selling "regional sponsorships," said Frederick G. Tremblay, committee senior vice president of marketing. At approximately $500,000 a pop, businesses and other buyers would get 20 tickets to each L.A. game, plus options to buy more, plus rights to market themselves with the World Cup logo and other benefits, said Tremblay.

"We ask for a lot of money, in cash and in kind, for commercial identification," said Tremblay. Only eight regional sponsorships will be sold, he promised, hoping to avoid the over-selling concerns that bedevil the U.S. Olympic "Dream Team" basketball promoters.

Telephone inquiries about sponsorship have trebled, said Tremblay, since L.A. captured the best games.

Admittedly, many businesses have long been in negotiations with the committee. Some of the biggest deals, namely with American Airlines and Mastercard, have already been announced. And L.A.-based Ticketmaster has an "agreement in principle" to sell tickets to the public, Ticketmaster officials have said.

Committee executives declined to name the companies currently under negotiations. A "major international hotel chain" will probably be announced by Aug. 1, said Kenny. It would team with the airlines and a host of hand-picked tour operators, to be announced possibly in September, to package tours worldwide, he said. The chosen tour operators will get blocks of tickets to meld into packages.

Criteria for selecting contractors are currently being set, said officials. Anxious to avoid a public-image fiasco in a town notorious worldwide now for its riots and earthquakes, officials are taking special care in screening tour operators and others who will handle the public face to face, they said.

"With people hearing about Hughes (Aircraft Co.) laying off 9,000 people, the depression in aerospace here, the depression in real estate . . . and that the Japanese aren't buying but selling (assets), the World Cup represents a rallying point" for L.A., insisted Tremblay.

Committee executives are pressing Congress to appropriate $50 million to pay for "visitor security." Foreign heads-of-state will visit along with vacationing families who don't know L.A.'s mean streets from its safer boulevards. Among the most vulnerable are the fans themselves, who face legendary hooliganism, especially prevalent in Western Europe.

America has never before hosted a World Cup series, or even one match. American organizers are planning a few marketing innovations, with an eye toward some of the failures of games past.

"We won't appoint a unique tour operator," vowed John Fulgoni, vice president of strategic operations for the committee.