Expansion Pack
April 6, 2014 - Indoor Football League (IFL)
Billings Wolves News Release
Mike McCoy serves a dual role in the Indoor Football League (IFL); he is the IFL Director of Business and is also the General Manager of the Nebraska Danger. In a short phone interview McCoy said the IFL is a 10 team league now with the addition of the new Billings Wolves with mostly a Midwestern footprint. The IFL ended up in its present form as a result of a merge between the Intense league and the United Indoor Football (UIF) league five years ago. Each of the current teams is individually owned and operated. McCoy said that the IFL is expanding for 2015 and that the league is trying to get that accomplished by June.
When asked about the current state of the league and the business model McCoy said, "The nine owners of teams that are now currently playing are experienced operators. They work together to keep the budgets manageable by keeping several items in the budget at a reasonable cost. The teams and owners help each other quite a bit. Each one has a specialty area and they share ideas of ways to generate additional revenue and to cut expenses. Everyone is experienced and has been around a long time." McCoy said the league has a very successful state of the union and is growing very methodically and extremely smart by trying to find owners and general managers like what the league has now in their owner operators." McCoy said, "This is why we went to Billings met with owner, Ron Benzel and general manager Marc Burr to do everything we could to get the new team up and running." He said that the league as a whole is very strong and doing extremely well.
I asked Mike to comment on the new teams that have joined the IFL since the Billings Outlaws left the league in 2010. McCoy said the Nebraska Danger is the new kid on the block and he runs that team as well as works as Director of Business for the IFL. McCoy said, "We are really the last team that we have added in the last few years and are located in Grand Island, Nebraska." The league did not put any effort into expansion the last four years because they felt like they had enough teams and were doing well but now the league is getting interest from different markets and places where they could expand into and they never really had an emphasis for that before and that is why he was hired to concentrate on that potential expansion. McCoy said that the new Nebraska Danger team has led the league in attendance the last three years and franchise of the year last year.
I asked McCoy how the Billings Wolves expansion team fit into the IFL business plan and he said, "The Billings market attracted attention for several reasons; it is a great fit because of where it is and fits into our overall footprint; Billings has an arena that is perfectly suited for this game and the Wolves owner and GM just signed a really great lease agreement this week; Billings has had IFL football here before and it was very successful on the field. Billings has a great market and fan base. I played there with a couple of teams I worked with and I always made note of the great crowds and how excited they were and how much fun they had at the games. The league wanted to help the Wolves be successful and we felt it was a great fit all around."
When asked about future expansion, though he could not comment about any teams specifically in the works, McCoy said that there has been a big push for teams down south and the league is just answering the phone and doing all they can for anyone with questions or who shows an interest, the league will do everything they can to help them. He said the league has the potential of six more markets for 2015. With the addition of the Billings Wolves, the league is definitely an expansion pack.
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