Twisters: AFL woes not theirs

By Doug Crise

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wednesday, August 5, 2009

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Twisters are planning to play football in Verizon Arena in North Little Rock next summer, though probably under a different banner.

Tuesday’s news that the Arena Football League will likely fold after 22 years isn’t expected to change much for the Twisters and their league, Arena Football 2. AF2 had little stake in the failed league because of a stand-alone business model in which the AF2 and its member teams were responsible for generating their own profits.

With little connection to the AFL save for the name, most AF2 teams are planning to play in 2010, even if the name of the league has to be changed.

“The AF2 will probably break itself away,” said Troy Thompson, the Twisters’ vice president of operations. “There’s absolutely no funding from the AFL to AF2.”

The AFL announced it would go on hiatus in 2009 as it dealt with the effects of the economic crisis. That prompted the AF2 executive committee to begin working on a contingency plan in the event that the AFL was no longer solvent.

Thompson said AF2 owners will meet Aug. 27 to finalize plans for 2010 and beyond. From a local standpoint, Thompson said the biggest challenge for the Twisters has less to do with money and more with public relations as the team must now convince season ticket holders and advertisers that the AFL’s failure will have no affect on AF2.

“We’re already making plans for 2010,” said Thompson, who said the team is already scheduling next season’s home games. “We have had questions. There is sometimes confusion between the AFL and AF2.”

If there was an obvious difference between the AFL and the AF2, it was spending.

The AFL lasted while other startup football leagues failed and eventually landed television deals with NBC and ESPN and a video game deal with Electronic Arts.

The success led to a change in the league’s cost structure, and like other businesses affected by the recession, its business model wasn’t suited for the flagging economy.

Twisters Coach Chris Siegfried, who coached for the AFL’s Kansas City Brigade before coming to Arkansas in 2007, said the AFL’s finances eventually went beyond those of most niche sports. When Siegfried was coaching in the AFL, the players “didn’t make the huge salaries they have the last four or five years,” he said.

Most AF2 franchises, including the Twisters, buckled down their already sparse operations when the economy went south, which might help explain why the league and its teams continued to operate when the AFL did not.

Jeff Lamberti, owner of the Iowa Barnstormers of AF2, told The Associated Press he felt confident the league would remain immune to the AFL’s struggles. The Barnstormers previously competed in the AFL before moving to AF2.

“As a league, we’re strong,” Lamberti said. “We’re going to continue, we’re going to play.

The Twisters are thinking the same thing.

“I can say this,” Siegfried said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

This article was published today at 4:27 a.m.
Sports, Pages 19, 24 on 08/05/2009