From Casinos to Arena Football: Butera Accepts Challenge to Revive the AFL

Managing casinos is a thing of the past for Scott Butera, who decided to move on by accepting a leading role at the Arena Football League.

In 2012, Scott Butera was chief executive officer of the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. Now he is aiming for a career change. Managing the gambling venue while players were migrating to other casinos built in more convenient locations wasn’t too easy, but the man seems to love challenges.

At the end of September, gambling news announced that Butera will be embarking on a new professional adventure as Commissioner of the Arena Football League (AFL), with his main objective being finding a way to increase consumer awareness. In other words, he has to bring the AFL back to life.

Butera is optimistic about the future and his new role at the league. “Arena Football has an appeal to a younger generation of fans who appreciate the pace of the game, its social media potential and the intimacy of the arena experience,” he told reporters. “That said, I think we can become a truly prominent sport in the United States and abroad.”

US casino industry slumps

Here are the top league leaders, as shown on the AFL website:

Nick Davila - passing
Derrick Ross - rushing
Marco Thomas - receiving
James Ruffin - sack
Jean Fanor - tackle
Marquis Floyd - interception
Terran Sanders - kick return
Nich Pertuit - kicking

The former entertainment and hospitality executive is known for his work at the Connecticut casino resort. He was trying to turn around its operations and renegotiate the company’s debt arrangements before deciding it was time for a change.

As a manager who was very much involved in the casino industry, Butera realized that competition from new casinos and online gambling sites in the US would inevitably lead to bankruptcies, layoffs and closures.

“We had a very successful restructuring there. It’s a tough market. Gaming is going to have to transition in many ways,” he explained.

And it’s not just American casinos that are suffering. Even Macau has seen its profits drop lately, mostly due to legal pressure from mainland China. Experts believe the solution lies in diversification, as the American casino market is oversaturated.

“There’s been a proliferation of gaming. It’s gotten very saturated, so casinos have to turn to non-traditional businesses to make up lost ground. It works - but to what degree? Usually it doesn’t replace the gaming revenue, because that’s your highest-margin business,” Butera added.

“We have way too many casinos for our own good,” he continued. “It’s very hard in gaming to trump convenience.”

Bringing back arena football

A former Division III defensive end, Butera spent two and a half years in Foxwoods’ service, helping the casino reduce its debt by half a billion dollars. Now he’ll be trying to make arena football profitable and bring it some cultural relevance. The AFL started in 1987 and has grown a lot since then. Top sportsmen like Kurt Warner used to make a lot of money in the arena game, but now the sport is just stagnating, trying hard to prove that it can have a stable and lasting presence in the US. The new commissioner’s main role will be to help the AFL move forward, and Butera seems to be the perfect fit, because he actually believes that arena football deserves a place in the market.

“We live in a football-crazed country. The league offers a great product. The NFL is becoming very expensive, and I think there’s a home for something that’s more of a value,” he told reporters.

In 2009, the league went bankrupt. Since then, it has been struggling to make a comeback with a leaner business model. Players are paid around $800 a game and they get additional performance bonuses. The league had more than 50 employees, but now it runs with just a dozen. Of course, casinos aren’t doing too well either, but the industry is far from lacking funds; it’s just taking things down a notch.

The solution lies in publicity

Some would argue the AFL is already starting to make a recovery. Average attendance at regular games has gone up 3.5% this season, reaching a total of 8,585 spectators. There were more than 18,000 people at the league’s 27th annual ArenaBowl event, which is the equivalent of the Super Bowl.

According to Jim Foster, who invented the game, “arena football has really had this mystical ability to survive kicks to the head and knife wounds to the stomach”. The main challenge is turning the sport into a sustainable business.

Some online bookmakers offer odds on arena football. If American gambling laws allowed sports betting the industry would surely get a boost. Pro-gambling groups are making efforts to convince officials to legalize sports wagering, but considering how long it took them to clear up the issue of internet casinos, it will probably be a while before they reach a decision.

Scott Butera believes the key to the sport’s success is making the game more visible to the public, by using a good marketing strategy. He also wants the sport to get more publicity on TV, as well as in print and online media.

Arena football certainly has potential, so there’s plenty of room for growth. All it needs is a good manager, and Scott Butera might just be the one. Only time will tell, so stay tuned if you want to find out more about the US gambling market and sports industry.