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Central Indiana’s new professional indoor football team is set to kick off its home schedule at Fishers Event Center on Friday night.
The Fishers Freight have sold about three-quarters of the tickets available for its home opener against the Tulsa Oilers, which is set for a 7 p.m. start. The team began its inaugural season Saturday with a 41-29 road victory against the Northern Arizona Wranglers.
The team, which plays in the Indoor Football League, is the league’s 17th current member and sole expansion club for the 2025 season.
Team executives hoping for a sellout of about 6,600 seats. Ticket prices range from about $24 to $80 per seat, plus fees and parking charges.
“This town does a good job of embracing entertainment … and the biggest feedback we’ve heard so far is how surprised people are about how inexpensive it is to go,” said Larry McQueary, president of the Fishers Freight and the Indy Fuel minor league hockey team. “Football fans are used to paying NFL prices, and we aren’t the NFL—and we don’t claim to be.”
He said the team has already sold about 1,900 season tickets and is “optimistic” additional single-game tickets will be sold throughout the season, including walkup buyers for Friday’s game.
IFL teams play a 16-game regular season, with eight games at home and eight on the road.
Rules for the sport also differ from traditional football in several ways, including the number of players on the field for each team (eight instead of 11), field length (50 yards instead of 100) and the height and width of the goalposts (9 feet wide and 15 feet high, not 18 feet, 6 inches wide and 10 feet high). End zones are 8 feet deep in the IFL instead of 10 feet.
The IFL uses a running clock for the first seven minutes of each eight-minute quarter. There are also differences in scoring, out-of-bounds catches and pre-snap movement on offense.
“You’re right on top of the action, because we remove the glass that you have for a typical hockey game,” McQueary said. “So, the players can really just fly into you. The other cool thing is, if the ball goes into the stands—similar to baseball—you get to keep the football.”
The IFL has been operating since 2009, making it the longest continuously operating indoor football league in the United States. The league’s franchise roster includes teams in Des Moines, Iowa; San Antonio, Texas; Las Vegas; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Jacksonville, Florida; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
All players in the IFL are paid $250 per game, plus bonuses for victories, with travel expenses, meals and some in-season housing covered by the team.
A majority of the players on the Freight’s roster played football at smaller or mid-major colleges, including running back Jon Lewis from the University of Indianapolis and defensive lineman Krystapher Oakley from Marian University.
The team is coached by Dixie Wooten, who spent eight seasons playing quarterback in indoor football before entering coaching in 2017. He was named IFL Coach of the Year in 2017 and 2018 for the Iowa Barnstormers and led the team to the league championship in 2018.
The Freight is the first significant indoor football franchise based in central Indiana since the Indiana Firebirds of the Arena Football League ceased operations in 2004 after three seasons at the then-named Conseco Fieldhouse.
The Freight is owned by Jim Hallett, who also owns the Indy Fuel, another tenant in the Fishers Event Center. The teams share a front office staff and have seasons that partially overlap. The team operates under a holding company called Indiana Football Club LLC.
The team name is a tribute to railroad’s role in the city’s, with the logo featuring a Nickel Plate Road freight train with a blue, black and and yellow color palette.
Fishers was originally platted along a railroad line in 1872 by Salathiel Fisher, who called the area Fisher’s Switch after the train station. The town was incorporated in 1891 as Fishers Station, a name that remained until 1908, when the Post Office changed the name to Fishers.
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I believe the end zones are 8 yards deep in the IFL, as opposed to 10 yards deep in the NFL.
I’m very excited for Fishers to have its first professional team. Really hoping it takes off. Cool logo. Cool color scheme. Cool changes from NFL style football. Seems like a lot of fun