ST. LOUIS – After the rebirth of the XFL and the St. Louis Battlehawks, it seems another professional football team is coming to town.

According to several reports and a Twitter announcement, the Arena Football League will return in 2024 with 16 teams. St. Louis is expected to serve as one of 16 host sites when the league officially relaunches.

The Arena Football League was first founded in 1987 as an indoor-only alternative to the NFL. The league went bankrupt, then stopped in 2008. It picked up again in 2010, before going bankrupt again in 2019. The league has been on a hiatus for the last four years.

The third rendition of the AFL could begin as soon as 2024 after a new ownership group acquired rights to the league in February.

The St. Louis Stampede had a brief run in the Arena Football League in the 1990s before the NFL Rams arrived to St. Louis and took over the Dome At America’s Center. A few years later, while in St. Louis, the Rams took a chance on one-time Arena Football League star Kurt Warner, who led them on a surprise run to Super Bowl XXXIV.

The Rams departed for Los Angeles in 2016. St. Louis has hosted the XFL Battlehawks for parts of two seasons since then, most recently completing the 2023 campaign at 7-3 with an average attendance of 30,000-plus fans.

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