As part of the Indoor Football League, the team’s season will kick off March 12 for its first game, said Stephen Evans, Frisco Fighters president and general manager.
“We’re going to give Frisco something to be excited about,” said Dave Whinham, CEO of The TEAM Management.
The venue for the team will be announced in the coming weeks, Evans said.
Texas Revolution, Frisco’s previous indoor football team, played up until this year. The Champions Indoor Football league board of directors terminated the team's league membership in the spring.
The ownership group of the Frisco Fighters has since acquired all media, marketing, licensing, and sponsorship rights of the IFL, Evans said. The team is not affiliated with Texas Revolution, he said.
The team is owned by Steve Germain and his family, who own Germain Automotive Group, a privately owned dealer group.
Germain said the Frisco Fighters’ name and logo were designed to cater to the region’s aviation and military defense presence while also representing its home city of Frisco.
“We felt very strongly about tying into the local market,” he said. “We need to be successful with the people that live and work in this market.”
Frisco was the “perfect market” for the team, Whinham said, due to the saturation of other sports teams in the city, such as the Frisco Roughriders, FC Dallas, Dallas Stars, the Dallas Cowboys’ headquarters and the future Professional Golfers’ Association of America headquarters.
“We understand that this is a very mature sports marketplace,” he said. “We know that we have to provide a high-quality event that includes people that Frisco citizens will care about.”
The team is actively recruiting players under the leadership of head coach Clint Dolezel, who played quarterback for the Dallas Desperados among other teams in the Arena Football League. Dolezel also served as the head coach of several other AFL and IFL teams.
The Texas native said he looks forward to being back home to coach the Frisco Fighters.
“I’m a Texas boy, through and through,” he said. “I’m looking forward to getting back into it.”
Due to the Texas Revolution’s season being cut short, the Frisco Fighters are offering to make whole all season ticket holders of the previous team by replacing those season tickets with season tickets to the Frisco Fighters in 2020, Germain said.
“This is something that we feel very strongly about,” Germain said in an email to Community Impact Newspaper. “Certainly making these fans whole is not our responsibility, and we have no ties to the previous team or ownership group, but we do believe in doing what’s right, and what’s right in this instance is reaching out to those fans who did not receive value for the support they showed the previous team.”
Those who held season tickets for Texas Revolution's 2019 season should email [email protected] for more information on how to obtain their season tickets for the Frisco Fighters' 2020 season.
