On Thursday, representatives of the National Arena League (NAL) and Champions Indoor Football (CIF) announced that they will partner beginning with the 2020 season. The two leagues will compete together, under a new league name with two conferences, the CIF and NAL. Scheduling will include in-season crossover conference games and a championship game involving the conference champions.

“For the fans, we are excited to bring these two leagues together,” said NAL Commissioner, Chris Siegfried. “Indoor and arena football fans have always desired to see different leagues play against each other. Now, the teams from these two great leagues will compete and crown one champion”.

Details involving a new name, scheduling, rules, additional teams, and playoff information will be announced soon. Both leagues are committed to providing a quality product while also leveraging both leagues’ footprints to bring indoor football to a larger portion of the country and even more fans.

“Our leagues started having discussions back in July, and we quickly discovered that we had an opportunity to both leverage our existing markets and position ourselves for healthy growth and stability for our franchises,” said CIF Commissioner Ricky Bertz. “There are still a lot of moving parts involved in this partnership that we will be announcing, but we are confident that the result will be more exciting for all of our fans, greater market reach and continued strategic business growth in the future.”

Representatives from both leagues shared that immediate additional revenue streams were created as a result of the new partnership and the larger league and footprint will allow the pursuit of even more opportunities. Additional information will also be shared online in a video interview with Seigfried and Bertz on Friday.

“By merging our existing resources together, we now have the critical mass to immediate additional revenue streams. These immediate revenues will offset additional costs incurred from travel and other expenses,” Bertz said. “We are excited about this and other details involving this transition that we will be announcing in the coming weeks.”