History of Roller Derby - Jam On, Jam Off - in The 1970s

In The 1970s

The indoor record for Roller Derby was set at 19,507 at Madison Square Garden in 1970. The outdoor record was set at the Oakland Coliseum on July 4, 1970, at 28,314 for a game between the Bay Bombers and the Northeast Braves. The following year that record was topped again with 34,418 for a Bomber game at the Coliseum. Their rival, the Chicago Midwest Pioneers, broke that record with 50,118 fans in 1972 for an interleague game against the National Skating Derby's Los Angeles Thunderbirds at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

At this point, the Bay Bombers home-team concept was duplicated with the New York Chiefs representing the Eastern U.S. and the Pioneers based in Chicago (but really everything west of Pennsylvania). A one-season run in 1971 by the Cincinnati Jolter team in the Midwest (Ohio, Kentucky, and other areas) was not financially successful, and the team became a road franchise once again. The Bombers were briefly a Southwest team moved from the Bay Area, but potential new owners couldn't come to terms with the Seltzer family and so the Bay Bombers were returned home. (In an unusual move, the Chiefs were a "replacement" team for the Bombers during the period that franchise was supposedly based in Texas.)

In 1973, high overhead and other factors led Jerry Seltzer to elect to shut down Roller Derby. In a 2005 interview, Ann Calvello mentioned gas shortages during the 1973 oil crisis as a contributing factor because teams could not travel. Some of the IRDL star skaters were recruited to skate for Roller Games' International Skating Conference (ISC), which quickly eliminated all Derby teams except for the Chiefs to again focus on the Los Angeles Thunderbirds. However, within two years, Roller Games' wrestling/circus-like approach doomed that organization; many Roller Derby skaters quit and fans deserted the arenas. Cultural historian Paul Fussell, perhaps editorializing, attributed the collapse of the sport to the declining economic class of its fan base in its final years; fans were ultimately unable to support the sponsors that had been keeping the sport on television.