PORTLAND, Ore. — An Arena Football League team appears to be heading to Oregon, with reports saying Salem will be one of the rebooted sports league's host cities when it returns next year.
Sixteen team will participate in the AFL. The league had previously gone bankrupt in 2019 before F1 Sports & Entertainment had purchased the rights to the AFL in January 2022.
The AFL tweeted a list of locations for teams Tuesday, including Oregon. It did not specify where in the state, but the Oregonian, citing TMZ.com, said Salem would host the team.
Portland was home to the AFL's Portland Steel, originally named the Thunder, from 2014 until 2016, when the AFL shut down the franchise along with others elsewhere in the country.
The league's Twitter account announced the other cities/regions to host a team include:
- Boise
- California
- Washington
- Austin, Texas
- Colorado
- St. Louis
- West Texas
- Chicago
- Ohio
- Minnesota
- Philadelphia
- Louisiana
- Orlando, Florida
- Tallahassee, Florida
- Tennessee
The league announced it would return last February. In that announcement, the league said it would launch with 16 teams that will play 10 regular season games before the playoffs.
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