ArenaCup VI Ends On Positive Note
Gary Stibolt
Sunday August 28, 2005
Bossier City and Shreveport is a twin-city economic booming area in northwest Louisiana. The main tourist attraction is not the river that divides these two cities but the Casinos that rest on their banks. It truly is a Las Vegas style of industry down here that is thriving and to add to that is the strong culture of football in the south.
The Fan Festival event they held last Friday evening down on Festival Plaza, which is a local arts and trade show area that hosts many events, was not heavily attended but there were about 300 that attended throughout the five hour event. Two things that factored into the lighter than expected turnout was the 106 degree temperature and the fact that it was opening night for high school football in Louisiana. It is tough to compete event-wise on a Friday night in the fall because of football.
One of the reasons that Shreveport/Bossier City was selected was because of the rich football tradition and the Independence Bowl. Organizers of the Independence Bowl are a unique group of people who have a passion for the economic growth and the opportunities it creates for the citizens of the area. There is not a committee that sits in an office in New York or Chicago working for the NCAA to organize a bowl game in Louisiana. The Independence Bowl staff live and work in and around Bossier City/Shreveport. "It was extremely important to have the Independence Bowl involved with our ArenaCup," explained af2 President, Jerry Kurz. "The Independence Bowl is very successful and when we approached them and told them that the game was going to be on national television, it was done. They took over and did all of the leg work. They generated all of the corporate sponsorships and partnerships that made this happen. This is our first year doing something like this and there are things we will learn from this but it is already proven to be the best ArenaCup championship game event and we could not have done that without the these two cities opening up their wallets and supporting us the way they did."
There were nearly 10,500 tickets sold for the game and an estimated 6,300 fans attended the game. "It was a tough time slot for us to have this game in," stated Jim Foster, founder of Arena Football and owner/operator of the Quad City Steamwheelers. "It was important to have the game on national television and it just so happened that Fox Sports Net had an afternoon window that we had to go with. It's a good first attempt at a neutral site but there are things we have learned from this and it will help us make next year even better. Overall, I give it a passing grade."
The week long activities specifically in the Bossier City/Shreveport really added to the atmosphere of 'Championship Week'. "If you look at the NFL, their first Superbowl was a lot like this," said Kurz. "The Superbowl did not start out the way it is today." However, for the first neutral site for ArenaCup, by all accounts it was successful especially as you compare it to the previous ArenaCup championships. The closest was the 2000 and 2001 championships. "We did a lot of the same things in 2000 and 2001 ourselves when we hosted those two championship games," stated Jim Foster. "We tried to do many of these things for our fans but what they did here and the way this community opened up their arms to us, was pretty successful."
The af2 is planning to build upon this year’s event and to have the ArenaCup championship game played at a neutral site for years to come. The ground work has already been laid and talks have already taken place, with more planned, about having Bossier City/Shreveport a permanent fixture for future ArenaCup games. In conjunction with that, the league has announced that they are close to a national television contract with Fox Sports Net that would televise an af2 game of the week leading up to the ArenaCup.
So what does that mean to the true fans of arenafootball2? "The fans here today were the true arenafootball2 fans," explained Kurz. "Out of the 10,000 or so tickets sold, over 6,000 came out." There are true hardcore fans of arenafootball2 that the league recognizes could not have attended the game for various reasons. The good news is that efforts are being put into place to help make it easier for fans to not only attend the ArenaCup in the future but attending a road game for their own team. "We want a national fan club in the af2," explained Jerry Kurz to a group of af2 Fan and Booster Club presidents at a luncheon meeting on Friday.
The idea is to organize a national fan club for the league office and then the league can help fan clubs and booster clubs around the af2 on a national level. "We can take your needs and concerns and address them at the league level and share them with our owners and get everyone on the same page," stated Kurz. Such an effort would include national sponsorships for hotel accommodations where fans can travel to see their team play and stay at a hotel that offers reduced rates. We are not talking saving five or ten dollars, we are talking significantly reduced and affordable rates. The leagues national fan club would aggressively negotiate rates just like they do to house their own teams on the road.
The af2 Fan Club would also help every team establish a fan or booster club and help create or improve relationships between fan organizations and their local teams owner/operators. We are not talking about a cookie cutter fan club template but the ability to help create consistent practices and policies across the league and enable fan organizations to grow and help them be successful which will help build their local fan base and the fan base of Arena Football. The success of the af2 Fan Club would then become a model for the parent Arena Football League.
The effort to organize a national fan club is a small piece but equally as important as any others that goes towards the marketing plan of Arena Football. There will be more on the af2 National Fan Club in the weeks to come. For now, their convention for 2006 is scheduled for January 6th - 8th, 2006 in Bettendorf, IA at the Isle of Capri Casino and Resort. More information is available at www.steamwheelerfans.com/2006af2 and more will be added as the hosting committee finalizes details. Jerry Kurz has challenged us to have fans, coaches, and owners from every team attend the convention. The convention will go a long way in servicing af2 fans and giving them tools and information to be a stronger fan organization for both players and fans.
While ArenaCup VI was successful on many accounts, it is only the beginning as more work is being done from television contracts, building a stronger fan base, and solidifying stronger markets to enter the league. So the season ends and the fact that we can report on all the successes of ArenaCup VI and the decision to host it in neutral site, we can also put to rest much of the skepticism and concerns that many had when the season got underway.
Gary Stibolt has covered the Quad City Steamwheelers since their 2000 inaugural season. He also owns, operates and is the Chief Editor/Publisher of SteamwheelerFans.com, a website dedicated to the Steamwheelers and their fans. He coresponds for other media outlets covering arenafootball2. In addition to leading the Steamwheelers Fan Club, Gary serves as Coordinator of the National af2 Fan Club. He is married with two sons and works as an Infrastructure Analyst for Deere & Company in their Corporate Computer Center in Moline, Illinois.