The idea of arena football in China came to establish the former NFL - Quartet Back Ron Jaworski , 2008. He was Martin Judge , owner of the AFL teams Philadelphia Soul , find an investor and started in 2012 with the establishment of the league. In 2013, lectures were given at major sports universities in China and trial training sessions were held. Initially, the start was planned for September / October 2014. Although new investors were found in Mike Ditka and Mark Wahlberg , the start of the league was postponed to 2015. The reason for the frequent postponement was the lack of state approval, which was only granted in July 2016. Ultimately, the first game took place on October 1, 2016, on the Chinese national holiday. Previously, the league's first entry draft took place in July . After eight weeks in the regular season , the play-offs were played, in which the first two played the championship in the China Bowl, and the third and fourth or fifth and sixth placement games played. The first champions became the Beijing Lions .
In July 2018, the CAFL announced that it had moved the second season from autumn 2017 to spring 2018 for marketing reasons.
CAFL Draft
2016
The first draft was held in 2016 in snake format (1-2-3-4-5-6-6-5-4-3-2-1-1-…). All six teams had 20 voting rights and could choose from a pool of 500 players.
Each team has a squad of twenty-two players, at least ten of whom must be Chinese. There are eight players from each team on the field, at least four of whom are Chinese. In 2016, 132 players were registered, 60 of them from the AFL. In order to facilitate understanding, communication is handled via the translation function of WeChat . Players receive $ 900 to $ 2000 per game.
transmission
All games were broadcast on the Chinese streaming platform iQIYI . One World broadcast in the United States .
People's Republic of China