Arena Football Growing

Following its busiest offseason, a new partnership with the NFL and plans for more expansion, Arena Football enters its 13th season this weekend.

Commissioner David Baker, with a five-year contract extension and dozens of cities clamoring to join the indoor football league, is even taking calls from potential team owners and from commercial sponsors eager to sign on.

“First and foremost, some of the good stuff had to do with the NFL,” Baker says. “It is a significant alliance for us. It has a lot of promise in terms of it speaks to the credibility of our sport. It’s an endorsement of our credibility by the NFL and it gets more people playing and watching football.”

In addition to marketing agreements, the NFL can buy up to 49.9 percent of the league and have a voice in its operation. Baker’s counterpart with the NFL, Paul Tagliabue, doesn’t take the association with the Arena League lightly.

“Our goal is to support football at all levels,” Tagliabue says. “An interest in the 13-year-old Arena Football League would enhance our stake in the future of the game, both in the United States and internationally.”

AFL phones have been ringing a lot more since the NFL deal was announced.

“We’ve seen heightened interest by sponsors,” he says. “But just as significantly, last year we had 23 of our guys play with NFL teams. We’ve had nine coaches and now have had 10 officials go from the AFL to the NFL. Our alliance with the NFL has not been about player development, but about the business of promoting football.

“To what extent the NFL involvement has helped in our expansion we’re not sure, but the values of our teams clearly are up.”

Indeed, AFL teams that once went for $500,000 now have a price tag of close to $5 million.

Arena Football, which has a TV contract with ABC and ESPN--a weekly Monday night game will appear on ESPN2 and the ArenaBowl championship game will be shown on ABC -- added a franchise in Buffalo for this season. That brought membership to 15 teams, and the Destroyers, who open the season at home next Friday, already have a season-ticket base of 12,000. That’s more than some NBA teams.

The AFL also has three clubs in Florida (Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa Bay), and teams in Nashville; East Rutherford, N.J.; Albany, N.Y.; Hartford, Conn.; Phoenix; San Jose, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Milwaukee; Houston; Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Des Moines, Iowa. Chicago and New Orleans are expected to join next year.

A minimum arena size of 12,500 seats has been set for teams entering the league, which doesn’t help many of the smaller cities seeking to be part of by far the most successful indoor offshoot of a major outdoor sport.

So the AFL is developing a grass-roots league, arenafootball2, which will debut next year. The idea is simple: bring professional football in the spring and summer to areas that have only prep and college football in the fall and winter.

“As we move forward with expansion, we get so many calls from people who run arenas or who want to put a team in an arena with seating below 10,000,” Baker says. “A whole lot of people are calling with arenas of 5,000-6,000.”

He hopes that NFL owners will run future Arena League teams. Saints owner Tom Benson already is involved, and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Patriots owner Robert Kraft have expressed interest.

Meanwhile, several Southern cities, including Little Rock, Ark., Mobile, Ala., and Biloxi, Miss., are seriously considering arena football.

“This would be a great opportunity to bring football back to its highest levels of popularity,” Baker says. “NCAA Division I’s size seems to reduce each year, but here is a chance to take football into some of those smaller towns and touch people directly.”