Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
WEST VALLEY CITY — The Salt Lake area is getting a new football team.
No, it’s not the NFL, or the old Utah Blaze of the Arena Football League. But Salt Lake’s newest football team does come with an interesting theme.
Project FANchise, a startup based in Santa Monica, California, with investors that include former NFL executives and players, announced Thursday an expansion team in the Indoor Football League in Salt Lake City.
The team will begin play to start the spring 2017 season in the IFL.
Four-time Pro Bowler and former Green Bay Packer Ahman Green was announced as the team’s director of eSports.
“Fans drive their teams every day, inseason and offseason,” Green said in a statement. “As a former NFL player with IFL ownership experience, I saw this as an opportunity to revolutionize fans’ participation by blending the physical with the digital. With exponential growth in recent years, we see eSports as an invaluable avenue to provide more access to fans.”
FANchise’s announcement is the second indoor football team to arrive in Utah since 2006, when the Utah Blaze opened its inaugural season in the Arena Football League in 2006. The Blaze, which folded in 2013 without a championship or division title, played at EnergySolutions Arena (now Vivint Arena for all but one year in 2009, when it hosted games in the Maverik Center (then the E Center).
After the AFL folded in 2009, the Blaze organization spawned the Utah Valley Thunder of the American Indoor Football Association. The Thunder, which played at Utah Valley University in Orem, finished 11-3 in one season and qualified for the Western Division playoffs in the franchise’s lone season before the AFL was revived.
Salt Lake City becomes the 11th team in the IFL, beating out Oklahoma City; Boise, Idaho; Independence, Missouri; and Austin, Texas for 2016 expansion rights. The team joins the Cedar Rapids Titans, Green Bay Blizzard, Iowa Barnstormers, Sioux Falls Storm, Wichita Falls Nighthawks, Colorado Crush, Nebraska Danger, Billings Wolves, Spokane Empire and Tri-Cities Fever ahead of the league’s seventh season.
The team, which will play its 2016 home games at the Maverik Center, did not announce a team name, logo, color scheme or head coach — because Project FANchise wants fans to control every part of the new team.
“Today is an incredibly exciting day for the millions of sports fans who have always dreamed of running their beloved team,” said Sohrob Farudi, founder and CEO of Project FANchise. “We are empowering fans to make real decisions; to be part of the team. This is the start of a new era of fandom, designed to give fans true, legitimate power.”
The Maverik Center’s max capacity of 12,000 instantly becomes the second-largest venue in the IFL, behind Iowa’s 15,000-seat Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa.
The new team will rely on fan-voting in a mobile platform to interview, hire and evaluate (i.e. choose to fire) the team’s general manager and coaching staff, as well as design the logo, mascot and merchandise — and even help call plays in real-time, game-day scenarios.
The announcement was made alongside IFL Commissioner Mike Allhouse and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, who called himself a “lifelong athlete and college and professional sports fan.”
“It’s exciting for me and so many Utahns that the next IFL expansion team will be housed in West Valley City,” Reyes said in a statement. “And, with the addition of the FANchise platform, Utahns can manage their team’s destiny, which is a literal game changer.
“I look forward to attending the first game at the Maverik Center and watching the new fan-controlled IFL expansion team take off.”
Team voting and season tickets will be available online at projectfanchise.com.
