Well the third time isn’t always the charm as the recent Kansas City arena football franchise went kaput. This was the third franchise attempt, which begs the question has the sport in this town failed entirely? Let’s break down each of the three franchises to answer that question.
The first team in franchise history, the Kansas City Brigade began play back in 2006 when the Arena Football League was rising in popularity. The Brigade had good attendance and a TV deal with NBC. Before the 2006 season, an ownership group was pursuing an expansion team for the 2007 season but they managed to get the team started a year early because a franchise in New Orleans had to sit out due to Hurricane Katrina.
Chris Likens stepped up to help the ownership group, backing them up financially but as time went on some of the owners started leaving one by one. The team played at Kemper Arena and had an average attendance of 15,234 fans despite a 3-13 record. The team’s popularity continued the following season with great attendance and its first playoff run.
The team switched to Sprint Center for the 2008 season and Chris Likens cut the team’s payroll after a successful 2007 season as attendance slightly dropped to an average of 12,828 fans. The declining numbers had to do with some fans being disappointed with a lack of tailgating in the parking lots before the games, the downtown parking fees and so on. There wasn’t a season in 2009 due to the league closing shop to restructure its business plan after hitting its peak. Later the league was discontinued for the time being.
The second team came around a year after the AFL reopened in 2010. Chris Likens brought the team back for the 2011 season along with the same colors and logos but changed the name to the Kansas City Command and the team played once again in Sprint Center. An average of about 4,000 to 5,000 fans came back the second time around while the other fans didn’t bother coming back.
After the 2011 season the team made a partnership with the Kansas City Comets to help promote each other, which I would say was a good idea to help promote each other and bring more fans out to the games. Unfortunately no one responded to the team. After the 2012 season and a disappointing record of 3-15, the team folded. In this case, the team failed because it wasn’t sure how to market itself and get the fans back.
The third team, Kansas City Renegades started the following year by one of the original Brigade owners in smaller upstart charter league, CPIFL (Champions Professional Indoor Football League) and brought the team back to Kemper Arena. I went to one game to give it a chance, I was disappointed and I knew this team wouldn’t last long.
The parking lots were really empty and the attendance was down to 1,000. This made the Command’s attendance look like a sold out crowd compared to the Renegades attendance. The Renegades didn’t put any effort in making the games entertaining, they didn’t have a merchandise stand, they didn’t keep their website update halfway through the season and they didn’t even bother cleaning up some of the inside of Kemper. The experience was just a high school football game indoors. This franchise was a total epic fail.
So in the short term, the sport was successful in the city to begin with but in the long term it failed because nobody knew how to market the product to keep the fans coming back for more.
