Three new US teams, three new Mexican teams to join AFL in 2017
Adam Markowitz
Friday November 20, 2015
On Friday night, bombshells swept across the Arena Football League in the form of major announcements made by Craig Spencer of the Philadelphia Soul.
Spencer spoke on behalf of AFL commissioner Scott Butera, who is dealing with a "franchise application going on" in Los Angeles, according to the Soul owner.
Spencer began his speech by mentioning contraction being a part of this new growth in the AFL. Las Vegas, New Orleans and Spokane all left the AFL after playing last year. The Fry family withdrew from the AFL last week as well from San Jose. That essentially left the AFL with just eight owners for the upcoming campaign. It is unknown whether the franchise application Spencer spoke of is related to San Jose or not, but one can ascertain that that is likely the case considering the time sensitive nature of this all along with the timeline Butera set for having the SaberCats committed or not committed to the league in 2016.
The speech continued with Spencer discussion of new ownership groups who are hoping to be involved for the 2017 season and beyond. The conscious effort is being made to bring in NBA and NHL owners to fit the model of the Tampa Bay Storm and the Cleveland Gladiators, teams which have common ownership with the Tampa Bay Lightning of the NHL and the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA. Spencer confirmed that there are three markets set to join in the 2017 season, two of which are owned by NBA teams and one of which has both an NBA and an NHL team in those markets.
Sources have confirmed to ArenaFan.com that Washington DC is the market with both NHL and NBA ownership. Sacramento is one of the two markets with NBA ownership.
The third market is said to be San Antonio, though no confirmation of that has been given to ArenaFan as of this hour.
Spencer confirmed that these announcements should be coming "in the next week or two." He continued to mention that there are another 10 teams which all have NBA or NHL ownership who are interested in joining the league.
All of the television sponsors from the 2015 season are back once again, meaning there will be games televised this year on ESPN and the CBS Sports Network.
Furthermore, the AFL is in the process of signing a television contract with what Spencer referred to as the "largest television broadcaster in Latin America and Mexico." He also went on to state that that company will be purchasing three international teams for the 2017 season.
The largest television broadcaster in Latin America and Mexico is Univision, though it is unknown at this hour if that is the company which Spencer is referring to.
If Mexico is to be the home to three teams in 2017, it is very likely that two of those clubs are going to be in Mexico City and Monterrey. There are only five arenas in Mexico which have a capacity of at least 10,000. Two are in Mexico City (Mexico City Arena and the Palacio de los Deportes), one in Monterrey (Monterrey Arena), one in Morelia (Plaza Monumental de Morelia) and one in Guadalajara (Telmex Auditorium).
Sponsorship deals were also put in place for this upcoming league year. New Era and Under Armor were also announced as sponsors for the 2016 season. Spencer mentioned a major technology company coming onboard as a sponsor for 2016.
Stay tuned to ArenaFan.com for further developments in the 2015 offseason.
