The Arena League announces Eau Claire expansion team beginning in 2025
Arena football is coming to Eau Claire. The Arena League, a new football league that is set to kick off its inaugural season later this summer, officially announced that Eau Claire had been selected as one of two expansion cities for the league and will begin play in 2025. The announcement was made in a press conference that included Arena League Commissioner and NFL Hall of Fame Wide Receiver Tim Brown as well as other officials working with the league and from Eau Claire.
Hot Springs, Arkansas was the other city awarded a team for 2025. Hot Springs and Eau Claire will join the Kansas City Goats, the Iowa Woo, the Duluth Harbor Monsters and the Ozark Lunkers who are all set to play this season.
The team, which has yet to be named, will play its home games at the Sonnentag Center, but on the basketball court and not in the field house due to the unique field of play that the league will use for games. Eau Claire was one of five cities considered for expansion that were a part of an online vote on the Arena League website. Eau Claire and Hot Springs as well as St. Joseph, Missouri; Dallas, Texas; and Rochester, Minnesota were all in the running.
While the team identity is as of now undecided, the league is hoping for feedback from the Eau Claire community in deciding it. That starts with the team name competition where members of the community can go to the Arena League website — — to submit a team name idea as well as team color, logo and mascot ideas.
Winners of the contest will be entered to win prizes including season tickets and the chance to lead the team onto the field according to the league’s media release.
The Arena League also released a timeline of events as currently planned. The unveiling of the team name is planned to be revealed sometime in June at a press conference. The league also plans to unveil the logo and the team’s general manager in July and the head coach is planned to be introduced in August. The team’s first home game will be in June of 2025.
One thing to note is that the team currently does not have an owner. The Arena League is prepared to own and operate the team itself, but is looking for potential local owners.
“We have to operate as if that’s never going to happen,” The Arena League Advisor Tommy Benizio said of finding local ownership. “We’re gonna operate it as if the league is gonna own it, but as I said before, we’ve already had conversations with multiple people between [Eau Claire team advisor] Benny [Anderson] and I who have inquired ‘Hey maybe this is something I’m interested in.’ They’re all good solid citizens and business people in Eau Claire.”
Keeping everything about the team feeling local was a sticking point that Benizio and Brown emphasized multiple times. In addition to seeking out potential local ownership and letting the community help pick names, colors and logos, the league is also planning on holding a coloring contest for local school children to design the teams uniforms in September.
The Arena League also is looking at local sponsoring opportunities and perhaps most notably, is hoping to have some local players on the team’s roster.
“We really wanted to try and find some local kids,” Brown said. “That adds some excitement if you have that. So we’re gonna shoot hard for that.”
Much went into the decision to pick Eau Claire as a spot for a team. Benizio stated that the league liked the idea of Eau Claire because it’s a city that’s not too big and not too small. Benizio also said that “there’s something special about being kind of a big fish in a smaller pond” and that Eau Claire was a community that fulfilled that vision rather than having to potentially play in the shadow of professional football teams at other sites.
Eau Claire also performed well in the aforementioned online poll and the Sonnentag Center also played a role in getting the league to choose Eau Claire. David Minor, the President and CEO of the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce also spoke at the event and alluded to the Sonnentag being pivotal to bringing the league to Eau Claire.
“When the Sonnentag Center was being built, a lot of people looked at it and said, ‘Hey, that’s going to be great for the university. What is it going to really mean to the community,’” Minor said. “If we didn’t have the Sonnentag, we would not be sitting up here bringing another asset to our community.”
Another key? The Eau Claire community itself. Benizio opened the press conference with high praise for the community and Brown echoed his sentiments later on.
“I was telling some people that I was speaking with earlier that you can always tell when you walk into a city and you talk to the people that it’s gonna be a good situation,” Brown said. “And certainly that’s what we feel here in Eau Claire.”
The Leader-Telegram will feature more reporting of how Eau Claire was selected as an expansion city as well as an overview of the league’s rules and unique style of the on-field product in the following days.
