Via ESPN:

Officials from what will be known as Arena Football 1 said Monday they will have 16 teams ready to play in 2010, including three in former Arena Football League markets: Chicago, Phoenix and Orlando, Fla. The Arizona Rattlers and Orlando Predators played in the old AFL, but the Chicago team will be new to Arena Football 1.

The league will also have teams from the AFL spinoff, arenafootball2, as well as at least one team from another indoor league.

Commissioner Jerry Kurz said it would be a “brand-new league” not connected with the AFL or af2.

“There has been arena football before,” said Kurz, a former af2 commissioner. “It’s been done well but not as good as it’s going to be done this time.”

The few years that we had the Indiana Firebirds here in Indy I absolutely loved it. I was sad when the franchise went belly up and am disappointed that we’re not in the running for a team at the moment. While it’s not the NFL by any means, it is still football and is very entertaining.

I do have one complaint about the new version, and that would be the name.  With the “1″ slapped on the end it just sounds silly. Sort of like how I always get a chuckle when I see “First Baptist Church”, “Second Baptist Church”, “First First Baptist Church”, etc.  If you can’t secure the old name and/or want to differentiate it, rename the baby.

And I do have one concern.  If the old model failed, I’m not sure how they’re going to pull it off this time around.  The argument seems quite similar to what has happened to minor league hockey in recent years.

Here in Indy we had the major league Indianapolis Racers (WHA) in the 1970′s (the first professional team of Wayne Gretzky) which soon went belly up. Then through the years we just kept going down a rung (Indianapolis Checkers (CHL), Indianapolis Checkers (IHL), Indianapolis Ice (IHL), Indianapolis Ice (CHL) & the Indiana Ice(USHL)) to the point we’re left with inferior Junior Hockey which they charge minor league prices for.  Average attendance last year was 3,364.  The average attendance for the recent CHL years was 4,700. And going further back, I don’t have exact numbers in front off me, but I recall the IHL attendance averaging somewhere around 6,000 with many sellouts when we played the Fort Wayne Komets (who have an amazing fan base as far as attendance goes).

All of that hockey history to say, the further down the talent ladder you go, history goes to shows (at least in this city) that attendance suffers.  Which makes perfect sense and can even be said of our professional teams.  While the USHL doesn’t have to worry about that quite as much since they charge the same prices as minor league but don’t pay the players, the same cannot be said of Arena Football (in any form).

And for comparisons sake, the four year attendance average for the Indiana Firebirds was 10,833.  And the Indiana Fever’s average attendance was under 8,000 via the last numbers that I saw.  And of course the Indiana Pacers attendance is higher than both of these, but down in recent years.  And guess what? All three have claimed to be losing money at some point (as have the various minor league hockey teams).  The Pacers losing money makes perfect sense due to poor player decisions (including horrendous buyouts) and fans boycotting them by not buying tickets and merchandise.  But for the others to be losing money would lead me to believe that there are other factors involved since player expenses are far less.  Sure, the draw would have something to do with it, but an average attendance of close to 11,000 sounds pretty darn good to me (if the average ticket price was $15, which is a low figure, that would equate to $165,000 per home game).  After expenses that might not be much, but throw in a good turn of merchandise and refreshments on top of your sponsorships and you should be doing pretty good.  But then again, I’ve lived in Indianapolis my entire life and can say we’re a fickle bunch overall, so maybe things are different elsewhere.

With all of that said, I do wish the new Area Football League luck and sincerely hope you’ve come up with a good business model that can make money while delivering a solid product.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Indianapolis, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.