The Arena Football League is unlikely to return from its one year hiatus.
Citing sources, NBC’s Pro Football Talk reports that the AFL is set to shut down permanently, with a press conference expected before Wednesday. This comes days after Tampa Bay Storm president Jim Borghesi said via Facebook that the league would disband.
The AFL canceled its 2009 season late last year so it could fix its economic model. At the time, some players “doubted the league would come back” in 2010.
The first sign of trouble for the league may have been during the week of last year’s Arena Bowl, when Commissioner David Baker stepped down. Then, in the offseason, the relatively successful New Orleans Voodoo folded. As perhaps a final blow, a deal with Platinum Equity — a company that was set to take a majority stake in the league worth $100 million — fell through.
The end of the Arena Football League would conclude a 21-year run that began in 1987. The league arguably reached its pinnacle earlier in this decade, after a television deal with NBC resulted in unprecedented exposure.
