Sophomore Season: Building name recognition, attendance part of Ozarks Lunkers goals for ’25

Despite a record sporting twice as many losses as wins last year, team officials say the inaugural season for the Ozarks Lunkers was largely a success.

“It came out really well,” owner Mark Burgess said. “We delivered what I thought was a really high-quality product.”

The Lunkers, part of The Arena League, had a 3-6 record in its debut season. The team plays home games at Wilson Logistics Arena at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds. Its second season begins with a home tilt May 31 against the Kansas City Goats.

“For the first season out, we had a really good attendance and that’s really what we need,” he said, noting the team averaged roughly 3,000 people in its home games.

Still, Burgess said he’d like to see the roughly 6,400-capacity arena filled. The Lunkers lease the arena each season for an undisclosed amount.

Individual tickets start at $15, with children 2 and under admitted free. Other single-ticket pricing ranges $25-$180. Season tickets for four games range $50-$6,000.

While officials declined to disclose season ticket sales for 2024, nearly three-quarters of the available field box seats for next season are sold. Henderson said only 11 of the 39 field boxes, which contain eight seats and surround the field, remain available. The price is $6,000 and are only sold as season ticket options. The field boxes come with free valet parking and waitstaff.

“That’s absolutely the best fan experience to be in a field box and we’ve sold more this year at this point than where we were a couple weeks before games [last season], so we’re really thrilled with that,” Henderson said.

As for revenue, Burgess was tight-lipped about how the organization finished for 2024.

“We finished up in the black the first year, which I was tickled to death with,” he said. “We’re not talking about acquisition costs and all the stuff we had to put in to get going. But operationally we ended up in the black. We obviously didn’t make a ton of money, and we gave a lot of that money back to our players at the end of the year as more of a profit sharing-type thing.”

He said building on last year’s financial performance by adding more sponsors and boosting attendance, “hopefully, we’ll push well into the black this year.”

In support
The Lunkers website lists roughly 40 sponsors, including Gold Mountain Communications LLC, Retro Metro and Rick’s Automotive Inc. Henderson, who also is a minority owner, said most of the over 60 sponsors on board last year have renewed.

“We’ve got a few that are still hanging out that say they’re going to renew,” she said.

CoxHealth and SRC Holdings Corp. are among those who returned as sponsors for the second season. Declining to disclose details of the partnership, SRC CEO Jack Stack his company has its name on signage and banners in the arena, among other visual assets.

“We are known as a company that invests in our community and it’s part of our strategic plan,” he said. “We want our name to be out there. We want to be an employer of choice.”

Noting SRC loves competitive people, Stack said connecting with the Ozarks Lunkers was deemed a good fit for the company.

“It’s a good market for us to be invested. Heck, we’re invested in bass fishing,” he said.

The Lunkers signed a health care partnership with CoxHealth for undisclosed terms in 2023, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. CoxHealth’s Sports Medicine Department is providing health care services for the team as part of the agreement.

“Our involvement with the Lunkers is rooted in our sports medicine team’s mission to care for local athletes, from weekend warriors to professionals,” said Dr. Heath Melugin, CoxHealth orthopedic medicine surgeon and sports medicine provider for the Lunkers, via email. “We are dedicated to helping them recover, perform at their best and stay healthy as they excel in their sport.”

Melugin said CoxHealth is honored the Lunkers ownership entrusted it with the care of their athletes.

“We are excited to once again provide sports medicine coverage for the Lunkers, and preparation for the upcoming season is already underway,” he said.

Season additions
Last year also was the first season for The Arena League, in which indoor football games are played on a 50-yard indoor field with participants playing both offense and defense. Games are designed to be fast paced with a quick play clock and no huddles.

The league opened with four teams in 2024: the Springfield-based Ozarks Lunkers; the Duluth, Minnesota-based Harbor Monsters; the Kansas City Goats; and the Waterloo, Iowa-based Iowa Woo. Season two adds Hot Springs, Arkansas-based Hot Springs Wise Guys and Eau Claire, Wisconsin-based Eau Claire Axemen. The league will host a nine-week regular season, beginning May 30 and ending July 26, according to the league website. As each team will receive a bye week, Burgess said it will be an eight-game regular season, followed by the playoffs in August.

“There’s already two to four teams slated to join next year,” he said. “The ultimate goal is to get up to where we’re a 12- to 14-team league to where everybody plays different people and then we may end up with some divisional championships.”

A local addition was made in January when Stacie Wells became the team’s new general manager. The Lunkers announced last August that the team had parted ways with Caleb Scott, who previously operated the Queen City Insane Asylum amateur team and served as the Lunkers’ GM since summer 2023.

Wells, whose career experience includes operational oversight at Betty & Bobby Allison Sports Town and the Fieldhouse Sportscenter, said sports has been part of her life for the past 25 years.

“Sports is a huge connector and whether you play sports, whether you have kids that play sports, no matter what, it brings a community together,” she said. “I saw the potential of being able to use this resource to bring better things to the community.”

Henderson said the Lunkers made an organizational decision to go away from someone who was more on the football side of things, which led to hiring Wells.

“The way the league’s set up, our GM is supposed to be high end into sales, dealing with the community and relationships, all that kind of stuff, and not necessarily as much in making decisions about players,” Henderson said.

Wells said a big part of her job is getting the word out to the community about the Lunkers. That includes going door to door to businesses, noting she recently visited several local trucking companies, as the opening game on May 31 is truck industry night.

“We want them at our games. We want to let them know we value them,” she said. “And out of every single one of them that I went into this morning – and I think I hit eight of them this morning – one knew about us.”

Wells said she’s amazed there appears to be a split of people who either are fully aware of the team as they attended at least one game and those who have no idea who the Lunkers are.

“I mean, there’s no in between,” she said.

Burgess said name recognition is something the organization will have to build to become more successful. Still, based on fan feedback from last year, as season two kicks off in a couple months, he’s optimistic of its chances.

“I’ve not run into anybody who goes like, ‘I went to the game. It wasn’t for me,’” he said.