Football championship game coming to Dollar Loan Center
The Indoor Football League is in its 14th season, and until now the league has played its championship game at the site of a host team.
That changed Monday with the announcement that the IFL National Championship will be played for the next three seasons beginning this year at The Dollar Loan Center. The newly built 5,567-seat arena is home to the expansion IFL’s Knight Hawks.
“We’re building our brand, and what better way to build your brand than to come into the epicenter of sports here in Vegas,” IFL Commissioner Todd Tryon said.
Officials touted in a news conference at The DLC how this was the latest significant sporting event to come to the Las Vegas Valley. The area already this year has hosted the NFL draft and NHL All-Star Game, among other events, and on the way are such notable events as the 2024 Super Bowl and a Formula One race for at least the next three years beginning in 2023.
“We’re just a few miles away from Allegiant (Stadium) and from T-Mobile (Arena), and then go a few more miles to Las Vegas Ballpark.” Gov. Steve Sisolak said. “… The DLC is a great addition to the Henderson community, bringing these top-tier sporting events and bringing other events. This is a huge win, not just for the IFL but for Henderson.”
Before placing the championship game in Henderson, the IFL had to decide to put it in a neutral site. Tryon said doing so made sense as the next step for the league’s growth.
“I had owned a team for 10 years (Sioux Falls Storm), and I hosted seven of these,” Tryon said. “We only had a week to two weeks to put the game on. So when I’m told three months, 90 days, that sounds like a lot of time to me. … We’ve got 90 days to build the best show in town.”
DLC founder and CEO Chuck Brennan said he convinced Tryon the Las Vegas-area was the place to put his title game.
“Thank God I was able to twist his arm to do this,” Brennan said. “If it wasn’t for Dollar Loan Center and our involvement in this, they’d be playing the game somewhere else, probably in Arizona.”
Contact reporter Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.
