Arena football is returning to MVP Arena with a name, logo and league that should be very familiar to longtime Capital Region fans.
The Albany Firebirds will join the new Arena Football League for its inaugural season in 2024, team officials announced in a Monday morning news conference.
The Firebirds were Albany’s first arena football team that played from 1990-2000 at MVP Arena, then named Knickerbocker Arena and later Pepsi Arena. They played in the old AFL, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The Firebirds won the ArenaBowl, televised on ABC, in 1999.
The new franchise will be co-owned by local businessmen Mike Kwarta, Andy Guelcher and Rich Szesnat. Kwarta is owner of Tech East Fire & Water Restoration, Guelcher is co-owner of Mohawk Chevrolet and Szesnat and his family own Constantine Construction and Farm.
“We’re a big believer in celebrating the history of arena football in the area, the championships,” Kwarta said. “This is Albany. It’s the Mecca for arena football in the U.S.”
Kwarta said the Firebirds will play a 12-game regular-season schedule that begins in late March. Ticket information should be available within the next two weeks, according to team president Jeff Levack.
Kwarta previously owned the Albany Empire of the National Arena League. Kwarta sold his shares last season to former NFL All-Pro wide receiver Antonio Brown, which ended chaotically with multiple head-coaching changes and the Empire being kicked out of the NAL at midseason for not paying league fees.
The new Firebirds head coach and general manager will be Damon Ware, who was the Empire’s offensive coordinator and briefly its head coach before being fired by Brown in a dispute over players not getting paid.
“This was home,” Ware, who lives in Cohoes, said. “After all that we’ve put in for three years, I just couldn’t see myself going any place else.”
His first signing is receiver Darius Prince, who led the Empire to NAL championships in 2021 and 2022.
“When they said they were going to bring a team back, it was like a no-brainer for me to come back,” Prince said.
Kwarta said the ownership group must pay a $200,000 expansion fee to join the new AFL, which had already announced 16 franchises in July in cities around the country.
One stumbling block for the return of arena football was the cost of workers’ compensation insurance, which Kwarta said was $1.5 million for the Empire last year. Kwarta said the figure has been negotiated down to $560,000 after talks with the State Insurance Fund.
“It’s a hell of a drop, but again, our past claims were minimal, so (NYSIF) saw the way we operate,” Kwarta said. “We operate safe, the league, just everything we do is to keep claims to a minimum. Fortunately, everything worked out where it’s worthwhile for everybody to make this work and get this back home.”
2023-10-02 18:04:13
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