The growth of the Arena Football Leagues can be traced to the year 2003 during which a deal was entered into by the AFL and the NBC for the telecast of the league games. In the year 2005, the contract got renewed after a span of 2 years. This occurrence led the league to change the season of AFL from the usual month of May to the month of February. The AFL scheduled the majority of games on Sunday, contradictory to the past when most of the games where played on Fridays and Saturdays. The year 2006 marked NBC taking back the weekly coverage and moving with a scattered coverage in regular season because of major sports events such as the Stanley cup, XX Winter Olympics Games as well as Daytona500. In spite of taking back the coverage it entrusted to show complete playoff schedule which was going to be finished with Arena Bowl 20th. The official ties of the Arena Football League and the NBC got broke down on 30th June 2006, when the deal was not renewed.
The Series of Events:
19th December 2006 witnessed ESPN announcing to buy minority stake of the AFL. The deal comprised of providing TV rights of AFL to ESPN line networks. The deal stated at least seventeen regular seasons of the AFL’s to be telecast mainly on Monday nights along with the nine playoff AFL games inclusive of Arena Bowl XXI which would be televised on the ABC channel. This event led to AFL getting increased exposure in the ESPN SportsCenter.
