Arena Football League on ESPN is an introduction of ESPN Arena League on several ESPN lines of channels such as ESPN, ESPN Radio and ESPN on ABC. The AFL also gets telecast on ESPNHD, ABC HD and ESPN2HD. The AFL and ESPN contract is of a five year duration starting from 2007 and terminating in the 2011 season of AFL games. Arena football league was broadcast on ESPN from the year 1995-99. It was in the same year that the telecast of playoff and regular season games was aired. In fact, playoff games of AFL were televised as recently as the 2000-2002 seasons. Long back in the year 1987, ESPN telecast the inauguration of the Arena Bowl to a live television audience. However, ABC later aired the games of Arena Bowl for 5 years in the period from 1998-02. The official name for the games telecast on Monday nights in ESPN 2 is the Russell Athletics’ ESPN Arena Football.
About Contract:
The contract between Arena Football League and ESPN was concretized on 19th December 2006 for a term of 5 yrs. The agreement comprises of wide multimedia privileges as well as broadcast of at least 26 games every season. The initiation of the contract begins from the year 2007 and would end in the year 2011. Based on the agreement, ESPN got 10 % a minority stake in AFL. The ESPN agreed to provide financial information and at the same time clarified its position in advance by mentioning that it would not give any further privileges to the AFL over programs such as Sports Center. ESPN has promised to telecast as much as seventeen regular season plays as well as 9 playoff games.
