WORCESTER – The Massachusetts Pirates indoor football team announced on Wednesday, August 19, that it has a new three-year agreement to continue hosting home games at the DCU Center.
The Pirates also announced that in 2021 it will become the first team on the East Coast to join the Indoor Football League [IFL].
With the addition of the Pirates, there are 14 teams in the IFL. The league is headquartered Grand Island, NE.
A fifteenth team, the Columbus Wild Dogs, in Columbus, OH, announced in June that it will delay its opening season of play until 2022.
IFL commissioner Todd Tryon said the league had been looking to expand East, but had rejected previous teams in the region that expressed an interest in joining the league. He added that the ownership of the Pirates makes the team the right anchor to begin the IFL’s expansion eastward.
The Pirates are owned by Hassan and Jawad Yatim. Hassan Yatim is also President and Chief Operating Officer of Yatco Energy.
Tryon also said that committing to the Pirates puts “… pressure to build and develop the East side [of the country].”
The nearest IFL competitor to Worcester on the current IFL roster hosts its home games in Moline, IL, just over the state border from Davenport, IA.
The Pirates have been in the National Arena League [NAL] since it launched in 2018.
In September 2019, the Pirates announced it would leave the NAL after that league announced a merger plan with another league. That merger was put on hold the following month.
In July 2020, the NAL announced it would not offer the Pirates an extension of its membership agreement.
