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.