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below. Austin American-Statesman
Hi, we play football: Wranglers trying to get Austin
to know its Arena team
Of all places, the difficulty of selling Austin an Arena Football League team became clear to Austin Wranglers President Doug MacGregor at a youth soccer match. When another father asked MacGregor what he did for a living, he informed the man of his role running Austin's newest professional sports franchise.
"Oh. What's that?"MacGregor explained.
"Oh. Where do they play?"
MacGregor talked about the Erwin Center.
"Oh. Where's that?"
All this from someone who had lived in Austin for 10 years.
Now it's year two for this touchdown-laden, lightning-paced football project, and the Wranglers, like many AFL clubs around the nation, just want to be known in their own city. Like a new kid on the block, they just want to meet the neighbors, talk football, invite them over to watch a game. AFL teams find themselves in a league unable to captivate the nation, yet marketable enough to boast two large-scale TV contracts. It's a league that humbly accepts its role as second tier, yet it's a proven product, entering its 19th season.
MacGregor readily admits the AFL will never be the NFL, and insists that the arena league isn't trying to "out-NFL the NFL." But the AFL is surprisingly successful, as attested by the longevity and growth of the league. In 2004, the 19 AFL franchises combined to draw more than 1.82 million fans, a league record. Those fans appear to be fervent backers of their teams. MacGregor said a 2003 poll conducted by SGMA International, a trade association of sporting goods manufacturers and retailers, found that the AFL attracts the most avid fans among professional sports in the United States. The Wranglers, he added, just want to find more of them.
In their 2004 inaugural season, the Wranglers plunged head first into the AFL, with mixed success on the field -- a 6-3 start gave way to a 2-5 finish -- but encouraging results at the box office. (The team drew 11,140 fans per game based on turnstile counts.)
The goal is to build a franchise for Central Texans to rally around, with loyal fans creating an atmosphere similar to those modeled by successful franchises in Orlando, Fla., and San Jose, Calif. With his franchise competing against a limited number of local collegiate and professional sports teams each spring, MacGregor believes the Wranglers can build a football community similar to the one embracing the Green Bay Packers.
"That's not where you put an NFL team, but they seem to do OK," he said. "That whole region has rallied around them, and there's no reason why over time we can't do the same type of thing here."
But after one season, community awareness of the Wranglers is sketchy at best.
"Last season, we could go around and no one even knew there was a team here," said two-way lineman Aaron Humphrey, who played defensive end for the Longhorns from 1996-99.
Furthermore, MacGregor said an AFL team's attendance often falls as the novelty wears off in the second year, heightening the challenge of sustaining a franchise. To avoid this sophomore slump, the Wranglers have employed several changes in their marketing. They started by hiring Austin advertising giant GSD&M, which promptly invented the "See Red" campaign, featuring two blazing red eyes on bumper stickers, shirts, hats and Capital Metro buses traversing the city.
To intensify the atmosphere within the 14,866-seat Erwin Center, the 50 craziest fans at each game will be strategically placed behind the opponent's bench as the "Rowdy Wranglers." Meanwhile, MacGregor aptly described the new look for the Lady Wrangler dancers as "tastefully sensuous." Ironically, the team's biggest competitor in 2004 was beautiful Sunday afternoons. To remedy that, the Wranglers moved several games to Friday and Saturday nights, in an effort to appeal to younger crowds before "they head down to Sixth Street after the game," MacGregor said.
Perhaps most promising is the AFL's new television contract with Fox Sports Net, which combined with the league's existing deal with NBC, will result in nine of the Wranglers 16 regular-season games airing regionally or nationally, giving the team much needed visibility and legitimacy. "
We need to build a loyalty," Wranglers General Manager Glyn Milburn said. "We actually have an advantage in Central Texas where football is king, because eventually that loyalty kicks in and helps sustain awareness over time."
For MacGregor, it boils down to interest over awareness. Although 27 AFL teams have folded over the league's 19 years, a proven product and loyal fans have expansion teams -- and their owners -- always willing to try their hand at the arena game.
"Our awareness is fairly low, but I'd much rather have high interest but low awareness than high awareness but low interest -- where everybody knows about it but nobody cares," he said. "We've got a great problem to solve. The formula is good, we just need more people to know about it. We know once they come out, they'll come back."
