Dogged Dodgers wow businesses with unlimited chow: groups driving bleacher ticket sales as all-you-can-eat proves a hit.

NUTRITIONISTS may cringe, but local businesses are embracing the Los Angeles Dodgers" new all-you-can-eat ticket packages.

For such employers as Jet Propulsion Laboratories, group outings to Dodgers games are a tradition. Each year, JPL purchases seats at a group rate and then resells them to their employees at cost. Last year, 300 JPL employees and their families attended the game. This year, 300 tickets to the right field pavilion sold out in less than two days. The group bought two more blocks of tickets and ended up bringing more than 500 people--all entitled to gorge on unlimited hotdogs, nachos, peanuts and soda--to the game on April 22 against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

"All feedback has been positive," said Carlos Aguilar, JPL marketing and ticket sales manager. "I have already booked a second date in June."

Group sales, primarily businesses. have accounted for 50 percent of the tickets sold in the right field pavilion through the first month of the season, according to the Dodgers. Ticket prices drop to as low as $20 ill the section for many games throughout the year for groups of at least 20 people.

"It's a turnkey solution and a lot of corporations are taking advantage of it," said Marry Greenspun, Dodgers chief operating officer.

The success of the all-you-can-eat section led to BP West Coast Products LLP's AMPM signing a three year sponsorship deal valued at more than $1 million for the entire 3,000-seat section of the stadium. The company has signage inside the stadium and will sponsor a discounted ticket package for the section.

The right field pavilion is currently the only section of the stadium with corporate sponsorship. The team has maintained it will not sell naming rights to Dodger Stadium, which please tradition-conscious Dodger fans. By doing so, owners Frank and Jamie McCourt are leaving a large sum of money on the table. The New York Mets recently signed a deal valued at $20 million per year for naming rights to their stadium that will open in 2009, the largest such deal ever announced.

"We'll always look at branding in the stadium, but won't sell naming rights on the stadium," said Greenspun.