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| Sport | Arena football |
|---|---|
| Founded | February 1, 2023 |
| Founder | G6 Sports Group, LLC (Trademark holder) Chris Chetty (chairman) Anthony Rossi (president) Shan Singh (president of operations) Arena Football Management, LLC (licensee) (Lee A. Hutton III) |
| First season | 2024 |
| Ceased | 2024 |
| President | Jared Widman |
| Commissioner | Jeff Fisher (Interim) |
| No. of teams | 8 (as of June 18, 2024) |
| Country | United States |
| Headquarters | Middletown, Delaware |
| Last champion(s) | Billings Outlaws (1st title) |
| TV partner(s) | CBS Sports Network, Gray Television, Vyre Sports, YouTube |
| Related competitions | CIF, NAL |
| Official website | theafl.com |
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional indoor American football league founded in 2023 with their first season beginning in 2024. The recent AFL took its identity, history, some of the rulebook and some team names from, but is not directly connected to, the previous iteration of the Arena Football League founded by Jim Foster in 1986.
On February 1, 2023, G6 Sports Group (a Delaware corporation operating as the American arm of Toronto, Ontario-based hedge fund ForceOne Capital), a new ownership group that had acquired the league's trademarks and social media accounts, announced the league's launch, as a revival of the previous Arena Football League that operated in two incarnations from 1987 to 2008 and 2010 to 2019.[1]
The league launched in April 2024 with 16 teams, six of which were absorbed through a pre-launch merger with the existing Champions Indoor Football. Three weeks into the season, after numerous controversies, unfulfilled commitments and teams suspending operations, the ownership group fired founding commissioner Lee Hutton and reorganized as a ten-team league (shortly thereafter restored to eleven, by the end of the season shrinking to eight), hiring former NFL coach Jeff Fisher as its interim commissioner and bringing back general counsel Jerry Kurz from the previous incarnation of the league.
On September 6, 2024, all eight teams, along with Fisher and Kurz, announced their joint departure from the AFL to establish a new league, Arena Football One, separate from the legal entanglements that ensnared the AFL.[2]
- ^ Hendricks, Maggie (February 1, 2023). "Arena Football League prepares comeback in 2024 with 16 franchises". Bally Sports. Archived from the original on March 6, 2023. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
- ^ AF1 Press Release, AFL X page, September 6, 2024