Brigade, other teams shut down
The Baltimore Brigade, along with the Arena Football League’s other five franchises, have been shut down as the indoor football league assesses its future.
The AFL announced the decision in a statement Tuesday, writing, “Earlier today, the Arena Football League was forced to make the difficult, but necessary decision to close our team services and business operations units in our local markets.
“These closures have resulted in the elimination of various staff positions, and is a direct consequence of the current financial constraints facing the AFL, which include extensive legacy liabilities and a recent multimilliondollar litigation filed against the League by an insurance carrier that provided coverage for the AFL between 2009 and 2012. Those liabilities, which are all related to prior League operations, severely constrain the League’s ability to expand and operate.”
Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed in New York Supreme Court by a former insurer of the AFL, claiming that the league failed to pay the company millions of dollars for workers’ compensation coverage from 2009 to 2012.
The AFL’s statement added that the league’s shareholders “have made significant investments to restructure and re-launch the AFL and make it successful.”
The Brigade were founded in 2016 and played their inaugural season in 2017 at the Royal Farms Arena in downtown Baltimore.
The team reached the ArenaBowl, the league’s championship game, in 2018, where it lost to the Washington Valor, 69-55. This past season, the Brigade finished 7-5, falling to the eventual champion Albany Empire in the playoffs.
Average home attendance for the Brigade during the 2017 season was 5,679, but that number decreased in the following two years. The average attendance for the Brigade’s most recent season was 4,677. ArenaBowl XXXII in Albany on Aug. 11 attracted an announced 12,042 for the Empire’s 45-27 victory over the Philadelphia Soul.
In a statement released Wednesday, Ted Leonsis, the founder and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Brigade and Valor in addition to the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics and was an an investor in the AFL, wrote that he was “disappointed” with the league’s decision.
“We continue to believe in the AFL product — its fast-paced, high-scoring style of football is perfect for a future where younger viewers digest content via OTT [over the top] channels and where sports betting becomes an important component to a league’s business model,” Leonsis wrote.
The AFL was launched in1987 and the league has gone through waves of reconstruction, including canceling the 2009 season after worries about the league’s economic model. The 2019 season featured six teams: the Brigade, the Valor, the Empire, the Soul, the Atlantic City Blackjacks and the Columbus Destroyers. Atlantic City and Columbus were added this year, and the league played a 12-game schedule.
AFL commissioner Randall Boe told The Albany Times Union that the league will consider a business model in which teams travel around the country to play games in different cities, similar to what the Premier Lacrosse League, founded by former Johns Hopkins star Paul Rabil, did in its inaugural season.