Wanted: Owners for Stingrays
Most people can only dream of owning a football team, even a small sliver of one.
Cape Coral businessman Jason Lawrence is giving football fans a shot at making that dream come true, and perhaps make it a business model for a national, minor-league football league.
The Florida Stingrays are offering 10,000 shares of common stock to football fans throughout Southwest Florida. Each share will cost $25, and includes a season ticket and an opportunity to win a new car.
Owners will be given opportunities for involvement, including helping make team decisions during ownership meetings to be finalized by the team’s seven-member board.
“Everyone I have talked to tells me this is a good idea. I figured if they’re all saying it why not put it to practice?” Lawrence said.
To understand Lawrence’s idea, you first have to understand Lawrence. In 1994, he was MVP of the Cape Coral High School baseball team that won a district championship.
Two years later, his whole life was turned upside down when he fell asleep driving on I-95 in West Palm Beach and crashed, leaving him a quadriplegic.
The accident made headlines, and the outpouring of love and support he got was something he will always remember. It drove him to try to repay a debt he knew he could never repay.
“I started a chapter of the Nick Buoniconti Fund in Lee County. I also started the Hands Up charity and work for a charity called Caleb’s Crusade Against Childhood Cancer,” Lawrence said.
A dollar from every share package sold will go to Caleb’s Crusade. If all the shares are sold, the charity receives $25,000.
Flash ahead to 2008. Lawrence started working part-time for the Florida Stingrays, which was then an arena football team playing at the Lee Civic Center. He quickly became sales manager then general manager before the season started.
Unfortunately, owners bailed on the team leaving it to scramble to find a way to finish the season. Where those owners saw hopelessness, Lawrence saw opportunity.
“I wanted to keep the team going, but I needed to find a way for people to love it the same way we did,” Lawrence said. “I saw something on the NFL network about how the Packers organization was run and thought it would be a great idea.
“I contacted the Green Bay offices and asked if they would share with me how they did it and they were terrific,” Lawrence said. “They showed me their documents and sent me to their legal team and provided me with the documentation so I could figure it out.”
Lawrence brought the Stingrays back in 2011 as an outdoor team, but didn’t see the opportunity to attempt the business model until now. Lawrence has built the team and made a name for it to the point where they have serious investors interested in putting money into the team.
Currently, the Stingrays are a minor-league football team in the United Football Federation. It offers players an opportunity to showcase their skills while also becoming mentors to at-risk youth in the community.
The Stingrays have enjoyed success on the field with four straight trips to the playoffs, including two trips to the state championship. Off the field, it has helped keep at-risk youth off the streets by giving them free game tickets and providing free football clinics hosted by the team and its players.
The team has helped mentor more than 250 kids, but hopes to help many more by selling the shares.
“We have people calling up about sponsoring and being a part of it,” Lawrence said.
The business model is similar to that of the Packers, which is also publicly owned. Unlike the Packers, which is the only such-owned franchise in major American professional sports, Lawrence has bigger plans.
He hopes that if proven successful, it will launch a two-tier, nationwide professional developmental league that will attract the best football talent not in college or the NFL.
Lawrence also has a plan where the teams in Florida would play, with the best players going to a higher-tiered league, against teams from Texas, Florida, California, and Ohio.
Those teams also would be publicly owned at $100 per share. Several former college and pro players have expressed interest in making it work, Lawrence said.
“There would be 12 teams like the Stingrays. They would be the single-A teams for the national team in Florida,” Lawrence said. “We want to keep it simple in the first year and have a round robin. We’d like to expand by four teams next year.”
Lawrence said $250,000 should be enough to allow them to do what they want to do.
“It’s a matter of getting it to enough people and to the right people. If someone is going to buy one share, they’re likely going to buy two,” Lawrence said.
“Families and companies will buy more. So now I don’t need to find 10,000 people. I don’t think if we advertize it correctly it would be a hard thing to do going into Christmas.”
For more information visit www.StingrayStock.com, or call 239-980-4397.