The Rise and Fall of the AAF

This is a graphic containing the eight AAF teams that played during the 2019 Spring season.

Exciting Beginnings

The Alliance of American Football was founded by Charlie Ebersol in 2018 to fill a "massive gap in the market" because, as he claimed, there are "tens of millions of Americans who have been [saying] for decades that they want to see high-quality football longer than the football season". The league was officially announced on March 20, 2018. By November of the same year, the league had figured out its team names and locations, shown in the picture above, and signed around 250 players. The league set its 2019 Spring schedule around this time as well. Even though it had only been established for a few months, the league was taking monumental steps in its walk toward what they believed would be success. The initial regular season was supposed to last from February 9th to April 14th, with playoff games expected to start the following week that would last until the league's title game on April 27th.

Pictured here is Will Hill III, a safety on the Orlando Apollos, as he runs onto the field to play his first game of the season on February 9, 2019. In this game, he had five solo tackles and one pass defense. The Apollos won 40-6 in Orlando against the Atlanta Legends.

A Season of Intrigue and Behind-the-Scenes Drama

The AAF's first and only season of play began on February 9, 2018. The eight teams were scheduled to play on the Saturdays and Sundays of the twelve weeks that followed. The first game was viewed by 2.9 million viewers on CBS, which was more than an NBA game that aired the same day. The football league was considerably popular, with the following average attendances ordered greatest to fewest amount of fans:


  1. San Antonio Commanders: 27,721

  2. Orlando Apollos: 19,648

  3. San Diego Fleet: 19,154

  4. Birmingham Iron: 14,307

  5. Memphis Express: 12,944

  6. Atlanta Legends: 10,895

  7. Arizona Hotshots: 9,932

  8. Salt Lake City Stallions: 9,067

*These numbers may not be completely accurate as they are not from primary sources. Numbers couldn't be obtained from the AAF as they have deleted their official website, among other information sources.


On February 18th, reports came out claiming that the league needed an emergency investment and was close to missing its payroll (Glenn). This was later refuted, however, and reports claimed that the payroll issue was due to a glitch in the payroll system that was fixed (Kercheval). The majority owner of the Carolina Hurricanes NHL team, Tom Dundon, ended up paying the league week-by-week in amounts summing up to around $70 million. In doing so, he basically took control of the league. From this point on, Dundon could do whatever he wanted with the league. At the end of March, reports from USA Today said that Dundon was going to end the league if the NFLPA didn't cooperate with him to help the AAF become a development league for the NFL. On the surface, a lot of people enjoyed the league and it seemed to bring in good revenue, but in the background, things were not as stable as they seemed.


This is the official statement from the AAF's Twitter account. It was posted on April 5th, three days after the league suspended operations.

The Abrupt Halt of the AAF

On April 2, 2019, Dundon decided to shut down the AAF. According to reports, this decision was made for multiple reasons. At the top of the list of reasons was likely that Dundon didn't want to wait to make deals happen with the NFLPA, but ultimately the league shut down simply because Dundon decided to shut it down. News sources cite many reasons for his choice, but none of them have a clear answer (Kercheval)