ArenaBowl XXXI was the championship game of the
2018 Arena Football League season. The game was broadcast on
CBS Sports Network
CBS Sports Network (a.k.a. CBSSN) is an American pay television network owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global. When it launched in 2002 as the National College Sports Network (later College Sports Television also known as ...
, AFLNow and
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
. It featured the fourth-seeded
Washington Valor
The Washington Valor were a professional arena football team based in Washington, D.C. that played in the Arena Football League (AFL) from 2017 to 2019. The team's home arena was the Capital One Arena. The Valor were owned by Monumental Sports an ...
and the second-seeded
Baltimore Brigade
The Baltimore Brigade was a professional arena football team based in Baltimore, Maryland, that played in the Arena Football League (AFL) from 2017 to 2019. The team's home arena was the Royal Farms Arena. The franchise was owned by Monumental Sp ...
at the
Royal Farms Arena
CFG Bank Arena (originally the Baltimore Civic Center and formerly Royal Farms Arena, Baltimore Arena and 1st Mariner Arena) is a multipurpose arena in Baltimore, Maryland. This venue is located about one block away from the Baltimore Convention ...
in Baltimore. It was the first ArenaBowl championship for both teams as they were
expansion team
An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...
s in the
previous season. Both teams were owned by
Ted Leonsis
Theodore John Leonsis (born January 8, 1957) is an American businessman, investor, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and former politician. He is a former senior executive with America Online (AOL), and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Monumen ...
, giving him his second league championship in six weeks following his
Washington Capitals
The Washington Capitals (colloquially known as the Caps) are a professional ice hockey team based in Washington, D.C. The team competes in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference (NHL) ...
team's victory in the
NHL
The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
's
2018 Stanley Cup Finals
The 2018 Stanley Cup Finals was the championship series of the National Hockey League's (NHL) 2017–18 season and the culmination of the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs. The Eastern Conference champion Washington Capitals defeated the Western Con ...
. The title sponsor for the game was
Bud Light
Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, is the largest brewing company in the United States, with a market share of 45 percent in 2016.
The company operates 12 breweries in the United States and nearly 20 in othe ...
.
The paid attendance was 8,183, the smallest in ArenaBowl history.
2018 playoffs
All four AFL teams qualified for the 2018 playoffs. The playoffs consisted of a two-game home-and-home semifinal series with the winners determined by
aggregate score
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly kn ...
. With one week remaining in the 2018 regular season and a then three-way tie for first, the league announced the ArenaBowl would be hosted by the semifinal winner with the higher average attendance through the season instead of using any tiebreakers or home field advantage based on records.
The #2 seeded Baltimore Brigade defeated the #3 seeded
Philadelphia Soul
Philadelphia soul, sometimes called Philly soul, the Philadelphia sound, Phillysound, or The Sound of Philadelphia TSOP, is a genre of late 1960s–1970s soul music characterized by funk influences and lush instrumental arrangements, often feat ...
by a combined score of 110–86 with Baltimore winning both games, 57–45 in the first and game two with 54–41. The fourth-seeded Washington Valor upset the top-seeded
Albany Empire by a combined score of 103–97, where Albany won game one 57–56 in overtime and game two was won by Washington 47–40.
Once the semifinals were completed, contrary to the previous league statement on the host team, the higher-seeded Baltimore Brigade, not the higher-attended Washington Valor, hosted ArenaBowl XXXI at
Royal Farms Arena
CFG Bank Arena (originally the Baltimore Civic Center and formerly Royal Farms Arena, Baltimore Arena and 1st Mariner Arena) is a multipurpose arena in Baltimore, Maryland. This venue is located about one block away from the Baltimore Convention ...
. The Valor's home field,
Capital One Arena
Capital One Arena is an indoor arena in Washington, D.C. Located in the Penn Quarter neighborhood, the arena sits atop the Gallery Place (WMATA station), Gallery Place rapid transit station of the Washington Metro. It has been largely considered ...
, had already scheduled summer renovations to begin at that time. The Washington Valor upset the Baltimore Brigade by a final score of 69–55.
References
External links
Official Website
{{Arena Football on CBS
031
2018 Arena Football League season
2018 in American television
July 2018 sports events in the United States
2018 in sports in Maryland