</div Having a large ownership pool was an intentional decision, with the idea loosely based on the Green Bay Packers model of having the community own the team. All of the investors in this group have season tickets in the stands and most live in Greater Des Moines.

“We think it’s important to put a local ownership face on the organization,” Strawn said. “We are local businessmen. We are the guys that are going to be having a beer with you at the tailgates and sitting with you in the stands.”

“There are some owners that probably could have done this on their own,” Lamberti said, “But we feel having a strong connection to the community was important, and our owners are treating this as a business, but are not primarily a part of this to make money.” The ownership structure also has helped in having widespread connections to job opportunities for players, sponsorships and expertise in making certain decisions.

Football player salaries are not the biggest expense for the franchise, which expects to operate on a $1.2 million to $1.3 million budget. The players receive $200 per game and a $50 bonus for a win, plus other incentives if they make it to the playoffs, in addition to other deals, such as free housing and access to a gym. The bigger incentive is to get noticed by Arena Football League and National Football League teams and move up, with 69 players on af2 teams moving up last year.

The biggest expense was buying the franchise from Iowa Pro Football L.P., the former ownership group headed by Jim Foster, for $500,000. The field system, which Polk County agreed to buy from the Barnstormers for up to $125,000, was the next big expense, followed by hiring eight full-time staff members, who are currently crammed into an office on the second floor of Vets Auditorium but will soon move to nicer quarters on the bottom level.

The cost of running an af2 team, the owners say, is significantly less than the next level up, the AFL, which they guess could average $6 million to $7 million. Though the lower expense of starting an af2 team has allowed the group to bring the sport back to Des Moines, Lamberti said it could decide to turn the Barnstormers into an AFL team in the future.

However, the former AFL team faced many issues, including changes to the league that made it more expensive to operate. After incurring operating losses, the owners received an offer to sell the team to a billionaire who wanted to bring an AFL team to New York. Foster tried to bring an af2 team to Des Moines after the sale, but failed to keep it going after a year. He then left Des Moines to focus on his other af2 team, the Quad City Steelwheelers.

“It was never a lack of fan support,” Strawn said, “And that was one of the interesting stories of the Barnstormers. People who weren’t aware of the business side would say, “Boy it was packed every game, why was it sold?’

“That’s one thing we like to stress with our local ownership. My line is I have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. I want them to grow up going to Barnstormers games. We’re not going anywhere.”

With only eight home games to make money from, the owners are relying on ticket sales, which will generate about two-thirds of the team’s revenues, and sponsorships, which will make up the rest. Season tickets sell as low as $80 and single tickets go from $12 to $22, with around 8,400 seats among levels 100 and 200. The company also is being flexible with sponsorship opportunities, which range in cost from $500 to $100,000.

Though some businesses were hesitant to support the team after its past failure, Strawn said that attitude changed after the first of the year, when the league started moving forward. One business called back for another 1,000 tickets to the first game, after hearing the buzz about the team from employees, Strawn said, and another company heard about the radio deal and called back to see if it could be a sponsor.

Strawn and Lamberti say that af2 has a stronger track record than before, with 29 teams in the league, compared with 16 in the AFL, and having played several seasons. Des Moines is in the upper third for city size in the league. “Top to bottom it’s a pretty strong league,” Lamberti said, “and it’s a good fit for these types of markets.”

Once the ownership group decided to bring the Barnstormers back, things moved quickly. The key move was hiring head coach John Gregory, who coached the previous Barnstormers. “It guarantees a coach that can compete and put a good product on the field,” Lamberti said. Then Strawn and Lamberti focused on raising enough capital from investors to purchase the franchise, negotiated a lease to use Wells Fargo Arena and hired front-office staff. Now the two owners are focused on getting sponsorships and promoting the league, while leaving the coaching and ticket sales up to the staff.

The Chicago-based af2 league also is hugely involved in the Barnstormers, sending a huge manual on how to operate a team, sending out three people to train the staff and offering conference calls on different topics, such as how to handle player injuries. Lamberti also goes to the league’s offices about once every couple of months for meetings.

Though Strawn and Lamberti (who both are founding partners in Riverside Partners Inc, an Ankeny-based public relations and capital development firm and Lamberti also is a practicing attorney) are entering this venture without any experience, they claim their political careers have helped them adapt and learn quickly.

“It’s fun,” Strawn said. “You get up in the morning and you get to talk about football.”