Arena Football League in the context of "China Arena Football League"

Arena football is a variety of gridiron football designed to be played indoors. The game is played on a smaller field than American or Canadian football, designed to fit in the same surface area as a standard North American ice hockey rink, and features between six and eight players for each team playing at any given time depending on the league, resulting in a faster and higher-scoring game that can be played on the floors of indoor arenas. The sport was invented in 1981, and patented in 1987, by Jim Foster, a former executive of the National Football League and the United States Football League. The name is trademarked by Gridiron Enterprises and had a proprietary format until its patent expired in 2007.

Three leagues have played under official arena football rules: the Arena Football League, which played 32 seasons in two separate runs from 1987 to 2008 and 2010 to 2019; arenafootball2, the AFL's erstwhile developmental league, which played 10 seasons from 2000 through 2009; and the China Arena Football League, which played two abbreviated seasons in 2016 and 2019 but was not directly affiliated with the now-defunct AFL. A 2024 reboot of the Arena Football League used the original league's rulebook with minor variations.

James Foster is an American former football executive and innovator. He invented the game of arena football, and was the founder and first commissioner of the Arena Football League (AFL). Foster was also a National Football League (NFL) and United States Football League (USFL) executive. and was later the managing owner of both the AFL's Iowa Barnstormers and the AF2's Quad City Steamwheelers.

The AF2 (styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the af2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup championship in August. The af2 continued to operate while the AFL suspended operations for its 2009 season. The league was effectively disbanded in September 2009 when no team committed to playing in 2010, but several of the stronger franchises transferred into the reconstituted AFL.

Like most other minor sports leagues, the af2 existed to develop football players and also to help players adapt to the style and pace of arena football. In addition, the af2 was similar to other minor leagues because af2 teams played in smaller cities and smaller venues. While the AFL was played in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Chicago, the af2 fielded teams in cities which are part of metropolitan statistical areas ranging in size from Milwaukee (with 1,739,497 residents) to Albany, Georgia (with 164,000 residents). Also in common with other minor professional sports leagues, players also earned less than in the AFL, with each player making $200-$500 per game, with a minimum $50 victory bonus.

The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league founded in 2023 with their first, and only, season beginning in 2024. The recent AFL took its identity, history, some of the rulebook and some team names from, but is not directly connected to, the previous iteration of the Arena Football League founded by Jim Foster in 1986.

On February 1, 2023, G6 Sports Group (a Delaware corporation operating as the American arm of Toronto, Ontario-based hedge fund ForceOne Capital), a new ownership group that had acquired the league's trademarks and social media accounts, announced the league's launch, as a revival of the previous Arena Football League that operated in two incarnations from 1987 to 2008 and 2010 to 2019.