I was first introduced to the daily staple of life that is ESPN back in 1987. I worked at a summer camp and weekends were spent in the local town drinking up life, pizza, and sports. The big screen TV at the Pizza joint was playing a new type of football, something they were calling Arena Football and the cable channel was ESPN. It was the first I’d heard of both.
Now things are coming full circle with ESPN buying not only TV rights for the Arena Football League, but also a stake in the league. This should help the 20 year league grow into some new markets and hopefully bring better attendance to the markets it’s already in. It definitely sounds like a better move for Disney than just owning one team (see Angels and Mighty Ducks).
While it’s nice to see the AFL get more presence on ESPN, I have a bad feeling it’s going to be marketed as NFL-lite, which is something no fan ever wants to see.
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