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Arena Football League relaunching with 16 teams in 2024

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Quite frankly, the NFL ‘minor pro’ league is best served as a resuscitation of NFL Europe, having as many European players in it as possible, because the NFL wants a European talent pool. The league isn’t patient enough to do that though. They should do similar in other markets too.
 
GKJ said:
Quite frankly, the NFL ‘minor pro’ league is best served as a resuscitation of NFL Europe, having as many European players in it as possible, because the NFL wants a European talent pool. The league isn’t patient enough to do that though. They should do similar in other markets too.
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Also, they wanted England and both the London Monarchs and Scottish Claymores folded while the league had a much stronger presence in Germany, with the league effectively being NFL Deutschland at the end.
 
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JDogindy said:
Also, they wanted England and both the London Monarchs and Scottish Claymores folded while the league had a much stronger presence in Germany, with the league effectively being NFL Deutschland at the end.
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It was 5 in Germany plus Amsterdam I think?

Which made no sense why it took so long to bring games to Germany.
 
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GKJ said:
It was 5 in Germany plus Amsterdam I think?

Which made no sense why it took so long to bring games to Germany.
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Because they wanted the English money first.

MMC said:
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Honestly, this all feels like a one year deal. If the league is as unstable as it sounds they will head to the IFL, along with Massachusetts, who are also pegged as an AFL team due to a lack of opponents in the IFL nearby and possibly Orlando.

Don't be surprised if you see a lot of bleeding next year.
 
The teams from the former CIF were confirmed today in addition to a new one: Council Bluffs, Iowa

That's at least part of the Omaha metro area. Team will be called the Iowa Rampage.

Confirmed teams now:
Albany Firebirds
Billings Outlaws
Everett (unnamed expansion team)
Iowa Rampage
Orlando Predators
Rapid City Marshals
Salina Liberty
Southwest Kansas Storm
West Texas Desert Hawks
Wichita Regulators
 
Here's my problem with this picture.

There's a bunch of small time teams, largely the Kansas teams, that were brought in for headcount. It tells me that they were brought in presumably due to the possibility of other arenas and markets they planned to get being unavailable, but they are highly unlikely to reap any of the rewards of their larger contemporaries. Meaning that they won't get new turf for the season, for example.

You likely won't see them scheduled to play against the larger teams and you definitely will not see them streamed on the NFL Network. They'll be cloistered in their own bubble and either fold or be poached to other markets if this thing somehow succeeds, or go to the NAL if they figure it out.
 
387056072_965767131719883_273197617089510231_n.jpg


If this is legit they may have actually delivered some big markets. And that makes it all the more confusing they'd bring in Dodge City, Salina, Rapid City, Odessa, or Billings.

I'm starting to wonder if there's some Saudi money backing this quietly. The AFL team they announced in Everett was an amateur outdoor team last year; the guy who ran the team called the AFL to ask about getting tryouts for some of his guys and by the end of the conversation he was an owner and is somehow converting an amateur outdoor team into a professional arena team and covering a 200K expansion fee and 1000 bucks per player per game?

Such a weird league. They literally held their announcement of the Iowa franchise the other day in somebody's back yard, then today they possibly leak teams in Philly, Austin, Denver, Nashville, and St Louis?

Hopefully there's real money somewhere behind the scenes. Because otherwise I have no idea how CIF teams that were paying guys between 75 and 300 bucks per game last season are suddenly going to afford 1000 bucks a game.
 
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The ceiling in that venue is lower than the height of the rebound nets. Kicking game is going to be ruined.
 
famicommander said:
387056072_965767131719883_273197617089510231_n.jpg


If this is legit they may have actually delivered some big markets. And that makes it all the more confusing they'd bring in Dodge City, Salina, Rapid City, Odessa, or Billings.

I'm starting to wonder if there's some Saudi money backing this quietly. The AFL team they announced in Everett was an amateur outdoor team last year; the guy who ran the team called the AFL to ask about getting tryouts for some of his guys and by the end of the conversation he was an owner and is somehow converting an amateur outdoor team into a professional arena team and covering a 200K expansion fee and 1000 bucks per player per game?

Such a weird league. They literally held their announcement of the Iowa franchise the other day in somebody's back yard, then today they possibly leak teams in Philly, Austin, Denver, Nashville, and St Louis?

Hopefully there's real money somewhere behind the scenes. Because otherwise I have no idea how CIF teams that were paying guys between 75 and 300 bucks per game last season are suddenly going to afford 1000 bucks a game.
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No, there’s no Saudi money here. You simply have a league desperate for franchise buyers. This is no grand plan; it is fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants league operation and I would really want to know if these guys will end up dotting the T’s and dashing the I’s.

A league with Saudi money wouldn’t touch the Pavilion in Salem with a 10-meter oil rig. Making “Blackbears“ as one word… charming.
 
PCSPounder said:
No, there’s no Saudi money here. You simply have a league desperate for franchise buyers. This is no grand plan; it is fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants league operation and I would really want to know if these guys will end up dotting the T’s and dashing the I’s.

A league with Saudi money wouldn’t touch the Pavilion in Salem with a 10-meter oil rig. Making “Blackbears“ as one word… charming.
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Yeah, I was speculating there might have been Saudi money because the rumor at that moment was an imminent announcement of teams in major cities like Philly, Chicago, Denver, Nashville, St. Louis, and Austin. Obviously that didn't happen, I was just saying that for a group to place start-up teams in those six cities out of the blue there would have to have been some serious cash behind it. The current league is almost all teams absorbed from smaller indoor pro or even outdoor amateur leagues, very few straight up expansion franchises.
 
Why does the Voodoo logo have an indigenous headdress? Voodoo is from African and French Catholic folklore.
 
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