The 2025 season is the upcoming first season of the new Arena Football One. The regular season will begin on March 14, 2025, and run through June 13, 2025.
All eight of the inaugural teams in Arena Football One had played the 2024 season in the Arena Football League, which had been launched that year as a revival of two leagues bearing the Arena Football League name: the original that operated from 1987 to 2008, and the second—coincidentally also known as Arena Football 1 before acquiring rights to the AFL name prior to its first season—from 2010 to 2019. The 2024 AFL's lone season began with 16 teams, six of which had joined through a pre-launch merger with Champions Indoor Football. Within three weeks, five of the 16 teams had folded. After multiple complaints of promises that were left unfulfilled to teams, to players, and to G6 Sports and Entertainment (the holding company that had been licensing the trademarks and intellectual property to the league), a hasty reorganization ousted founding commissioner Lee Hutton. With direct backing from G6, the remaining teams committed to finishing the 10-week season; three additional teams would fold over the course of the season, leaving eight by the end of the regular season. Jeff Fisher, who had originally joined the league as an advisor to the Nashville Kats, assumed the role of temporary commissioner for the remainder of the season.
Following ArenaBowl XXXIII, the surviving members of the AFL, including champions the Billings Outlaws, began hyping up "Arena Football is back" in various team social sites posing an image on September 4, 2024, saying, "A new era begins today." The next day it was announced that they would be playing in a newly-formed league called Arena Football One, sharing the name with a working title used by the 2010s AFL before its launch. The trademark was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on September 1, 2024, by Outlaws owner Steven Titus dba Arena Football One, LLC, of Gillette, Wyoming.[1] (G6 Sports Group still owns the AFL logo and its intellectual properties, but not the team IP's.)
The new league will be a full separation from G6, as all eight teams leave the AFL and join AF1. In a statement to Arena Insider, G6 executive Chris Chetty noted that after the league had narrowly completed the 2024 season, it had been left with numerous unpaid debts that he, though he would maintain responsibility, had been advised not to immediately pay off, but that the team owners had stipulated the debts be paid as a condition for returning.[2]
On September 6, 2024, AF1 formally announced its launch with a press release and new social media feeds, confirming that the new league would carry over Jeff Fisher as commissioner (now on a permanent basis) and Jerry Kurz, the founding commissioner of the 2010s AFL and a veteran of the original league, as chief executive officer along with the existing front office staff. In the statement, AF1 indicated that additional "expansion teams in emerging markets" would be among the teams to play the 2025 season.[3] Of those teams, the Arizona Bandits, a team that had previously been announced to be joining the AFL in 2025, released its own teaser at the same time as the eight inaugural teams.[4] In an interview with the Billings Gazette, Titus indicated that one of the expansion teams would be based in Mexico, and others would be in cities that had previously hosted arena football teams.[5]
On September 9, 2024, AF1 announced the Stockton Crusaders as their first expansion team joining the eight former AFL teams for the 2025 season.[6] On September 10, AF1 announced another expansion team to be based out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania[7] and owned by Matt Rowland, a college friend of league president Jared Widman's.[8] On September 12, the Monterrey Kings were announced as the first AF1 team in Mexico.[9] Firebirds owner Mike Kwarta indicated in an interview that the twelfth team, which is scheduled to be formally announced the last week of September, would be Arizona.[10] The league had not ruled out further expansion before the season starts, with the schedule to be finalized by the end of October.[10]
In an interview with the Albany Times-Union, league sources indicated that an expansion draft would be held to allot players to the four new AF1 teams, with the existing teams allowed to protect 15 players.[10] The league will offer a base salary of $400 per game—less than the $1,000 that the AFL had initially promised in 2024 but higher than other indoor leagues, with teams allowed to pay higher salaries at their own discretion— and will not require players to play "ironman" on both offense and defense as they had under previous iterations of the league.[10] The league will follow traditional arena football rules and restrictions otherwise.[10] The season structure will feature two divisions (East and West) of six teams each, assuming no further expansion, all playing a 12-game regular season (up from 10 in 2024) and an eight-team playoff culminating in a yet-unnamed championship to be held at the home arena of the highest-seeded team.[10]
On October 22, the Oregon Lightning, partially owned by the head coach of the 2024 AFL's Oregon Blackbears Chuck Jones, were announced as AF1's newest expansion team. The expansion marks the continuation of arena football in Oregon under a new structure—legally, a continuation of the Oregon High Desert Storm of the American West Football Conference—following the Blackbears' entanglements with Hutton and its unsuccessful efforts to remain in the AFL in 2024.[11] On November 13, the Corpus Christi Tritons were announced to be joining AF1; the Tritons had been part of American Indoor Football for the 2024 season but had been excluded when most of the AIF's teams joined the National Arena League.[12]
On November 15, the Arizona Bandits, previously announced as a 2025 AFL expansion team, were officially announced as members of AF1.[13] That same day, the AF1 announced it would be aligned into three divisions with a twelve-game schedule across a 14-week regular season, with the specific schedule and alignment to be announced on November 19.[14] On November 18, the AF1 divisional alignment was announced,[15] with the Monterrey Kings and Stockton Crusaders electing to postpone their inaugural seasons until 2026.[16]
On November 18, Arena Football One announced, along with the divisional alignments, that the postseason format will feature 6 teams. The three division winners and three teams with the next best records, regardless of division, will make the playoffs.[19]
