Photo | Grant Welker
The DCU Center is city-owned, and operated under a management contract with the firm ASM Global.
December 18, 2020
Pirates arena football team planning Worcester start in April
Photo | Grant Welker
Massachusetts Pirates co-owner Jawad Yatim introduces the Worcester arena football team at an event prior to the coronavirus pandemic. At the table from left are Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty, Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Timothy Murray and Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus.
By Grant Welker
The Massachusetts Pirates, an arena football team that plays at Worcester's DCU Center, is planning to start its upcoming season in April, and its owner is confident the season will take place no matter the future for the coronavirus pandemic.
"I have no doubt that we'll have a season," said Jawad Yatim, the team's owner. "I'm 100% confident we'll have a season."
Whether home games will include fans isn't yet known. The team has had discussions with DCU Center management about what procedures may look like for having fans attend games, and the plan to allow fans for games, Yatim said. More details aren't yet known because state regulations are out of the team's hands, he said.
"We'll let those people make those decisions and just focus on what we can control," Yatim said.
It'll be the Pirates' inaugural season in the Indoor Football League, whose 13 members are largely in the Midwest and Southwest. The Pirates, who began play in 2018, were previously in the National Arena League before a split in which the league implied the team broke unspecified rules on and off the field. The team denied wrongdoing.
IFL gives the Pirates a schedule including teams from Louisville, Ky., the nearest geographically, to Arizona and Washington. The league calls itself the longest-running indoor football league, dating to 2009, with five additional teams slated to begin in 2022. Six teams will be playing in the league for the first time in 2021, in a sport in which teams and entire leagues can come and go frequently.
The Pirates' 2020 season was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the team is slated to start its 2021 season on Apr. 2 in North Dakota. They're scheduled to play their first home game in Worcester since July 2019 on Apr. 10. The 16-game season is scheduled to last through July 22.
The team and the IFL hasn't specified whether it expects to allow fans at games next year. About half the league's teams play in markets that presently allow fans in arenas, Yatim said.
Not playing a 2020 season wasn't so much a hit to the team's finances because, without games, it didn't need to pay players' salaries. Arena football leagues have one-year contracts, which can tend to lead to turnover each season anyway. In the IFL, teams face another restriction the Pirates haven't had to factor in before: only seven players on each team are allowed to have three or more years of experience in a professional league, a rule aimed at keeping rosters primarily made of younger players. Many have aspirations of making a National Football League roster.
The bigger hit by missing a year was to the development of the team's fan base, Yatim said.
"When you're not playing, you can't do that," he said.
One aspect will help with the team's name recognition: it has signed a three-year extension to have its games broadcast on NESN, and it's the only arena football team in New England. The team prioritizes cross-promotion with the Yatco gas station chain the Yatim family also owns.
As for corporate sponsorships, those are also growing, Yatim said. The team's sponsors include national names such as Bud Light and the energy drink Cintron, as well as a few local ones, including the restaurant The Boardroom and Nault Chiropractic, both of Worcester. The team is in talks with other sponsors whose ties could be announced soon, he said.
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