HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — The Arena League is coming to Hot Springs and alongside the excitement of having a new six-on-six indoor American football league team in the Spa City, they've also drummed up excitement surrounding what the team's name would be.
On Thursday afternoon, Arena League advisor Tommy Benizio was joined by the new General Manager Chris Goodman inside the Gangster Museum of America in downtown Hot Springs where they unveiled the new team name: Hot Springs Wiseguys.
The name pays homage to two of the many things that make the Spa City so unique— its gangster and horse racing history.
“I think it’s cool because you kind of think ‘wiseguy’ you maybe think ‘the leader’ or something like that so I really like it,” Goodman described.
Both Goodman and Benizio were proud and impressed by the support they received from the community to help come up with a name for The Arena League's newest team.
“We had hundreds of entries for this name from spring water references to some truly wild ideas,” Goodman said. “But I believe that the theme of this team is tough yet fun, and something that Arkansans will be proud to root for and be represented by for years to come.”
“We ran an awesome ‘name the team contest’,” Benizio said. “[We| got close to a thousand people in the community to submit entries and it was very clear - like four out of ten were something to do with the gangsters, the mobsters, that enjoyed our city all those years ago so it became clear to us, we got to focus around that area.”
The Arena League, not to be confused with the Arena Football League, is currently in its first season of existence with four teams: Ozarks Lunkers (Springfield, MO), Duluth Harbor Monsters (Duluth, MN), Iowa Woo (Waterloo, IA) and Kansas City Goats (Kansas City, MO).
Arkansas’s newest professional team will begin playing in the summer of 2025 and its home games will be played inside Bank OZK Arena.
For more information on the Hot Springs Wiseguys, please click here.