 The Foster Trophy is awarded to the ArenaBowl winner | |
| First played | August 1, 1987 |
|---|---|
| Trophy | Foster Trophy |
The ArenaBowl is the championship game of the Arena Football League. Originally hosted at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena based on home attendance during the inaugural 1987 season, save four years (2005–2008) the game was hosted by the team with the higher seed based on regular season performance. In 2005–2006 the league staged the game in Las Vegas, and in 2007–2008 New Orleans hosted the event. For the series final two games, regular season home attendance between the competing teams determined which would host.
Originally using year-based nomenclature ("ArenaBowl '87"), the league would begin consistently referring to the game using roman numerals beginning in 1994 ("ArenaBowl VIII"). The original Arena Football League's 2009 bankruptcy liquidation brought the league's existence to a close, but ArenaBowl XXIII would be staged in 2010 as the championship game of a new league which assumed the AFL's intellectual properties. The final ten games of the series would be staged under the "new" Arena Football League, concluding with ArenaBowl XXXII between the Albany Empire and Philadelphia Soul. The second AFL ultimately had the same fate as the first, ceasing operations after its 2019 season and undergoing Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.[1]
The ArenaBowl was revived in 2024 and was played at a neutral site, the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Foster Trophy was not revived for this game.
- ^ Gleeson, Scott (November 27, 2019), "Arena Football League files for bankruptcy, ceases all operations", USA Today, retrieved November 27, 2019