Arena Football League on ABC was the de facto title for broadcasts of
Arena Football League (AFL) games on the
American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network. ABC was the first major television network in the United States to give exposure[1][2] to the Arena Football League. Prior to
1998,[3][4][5] when ABC televised
ArenaBowl XII, the most exposure that the league would receive was on
ESPN, which would air
tape-delayed games, often well after midnight.
Background
ABC's coverage of the AFL was usually relegated to solely the annual championship game, the
ArenaBowl. From 1998-
2002, ABC's ArenaBowl broadcasts were aired as under the
Wide World of Sports[6] anthology umbrella.
Following a four-year spell with
NBC, coverage of the AFL would resume on ABC in
2007. As part of a five-year deal with sister network
ESPN, a minimum of 17 regular-season games and nine playoff games—including a minimum of three Wild Card games were televised. Also televised were three Divisional Playoff games, both Conference Championships and the
ArenaBowl on ESPN,
ESPN2 and ABC. To clarify, both the 2007 season opener and ArenaBowl were on ABC, where three wild card games, two divisional games and one conference championship were on ESPN and the seventeen regular season Monday night games, one wild card game, two divisional games and one conference championship game was all on ESPN2. This particular arrangement with ABC was again in place in
2008 before
NFL Network took over the broadcasting rights for the ArenaBowl for the next three seasons.