Kansas City Command

Arena Football League (2011-2012)

Background

The Kansas City Command was a short-lived revival, after a two-year absence, of an earlier and far more popular Arena Football League franchise known as the Kansas City Brigade. The Brigade started out at Kemper Arena in 2006 before moving into the new $276M Sprint Center downtown for their final season in 2008. The club claimed average attendance of 13,167 over three seasons from 2006 to 2008.

The original Arena Football League closed down after the 2008 season and filed for bankruptcy, taking the Brigade along with it.  After going dark for 2009, a group of owners purchased the AFL’s intellectual property from the bankruptcy court and re-launched the league in 2010. Former Brigade owner Chris Likens announced midway through the league 2010’s re-boot season that he would bring Kansas City back into the league in 2011.

The “new” AFL was in all respects a cheaper, shabbier imitation of the original. Gone were the billionaire NFL owners like Jerry Jones, Stan Kroenke and Arthur Blank who purchased Arena Football League franchises in cities like Dallas, Denver and Atlanta during the 2000’s. In their place were (mostly) mom-and-pop style operators from Spokane, Shreveport, Tulsa and Huntsville, Alabama. Many of the top players stayed away from the revived league as salaries and benefits were cut drastically. Fans stayed away too.

Likens did not bring back the original “Brigade” name, but used a virtually identical Stealth Bomber-derived logo. Like the rest of the new AFL, the Command was similar to the old product, but different and less fun. The team returned to the Sprint Center in 2011. Announced attendance was a grim 4,353 on average for eight dates in 2011 and 4,303 in 2012.

The Command folded quietly in August 2012 shortly after completing its second and final season.

Kansas City Command Shop

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