Arena football is distinguished from the other indoor leagues by its use of large rebound nets attached to the side of each goalpost, which keep any missed field goal or overthrown ball in the field of play and allow the ball to remain live; the rebound nets were the only part of the patent that was upheld until it expired.

[1] The first demonstration of football on a small field was actually played outdoors at the original open-air Madison Square Garden.

[2] Using nine-man sides, Pennsylvania defeated Rutgers 10–0 at the annual meeting of the Amateur Athletic Union on January 16, 1889.

[3] Two months later, on March 7, 1889, the first documented indoor football game was an exhibition between Pennsylvania and Riverton Club at the Philadelphia Academy of Music.

"[8][9] Adding to the novelty, as daylight turned to darkness, the field inside the Coliseum was lit with electric lighting.

[10] With seven acres of floor space, the sprawling Coliseum is believed to have not needed any compromises to accommodate an American football field.

The men had no trouble in catching punts, and football was played on its merits, without the handicaps of a wet field or a strong wind.

Toward the end of the second half it got very dark, and the spectators were treated to a novelty in the shape of football by electric light.

[12] Two years later, poor weather conditions led to the Bears hosting the 1932 NFL Playoff Game against the Portsmouth Spartans (now the Detroit Lions) at the stadium.

In the 1960s, the Boardwalk Bowl, a post-season game involving small college teams, was contested at the convention center.

The Philadelphia-based Liberty Bowl game, which had been played at Municipal Stadium from 1959 to 1963, was moved into the Convention Center in 1964 for the contest between Utah and West Virginia.

Foster adopted short-pile artificial turfs (which were then standard) such as AstroTurf for the field because of its ability to be easily rolled up when the arena is being used for other sports.

The AFL also adopted the USFL's concept of playing in the late spring and summer, since this is when most hockey and basketball arenas have the fewest schedule conflicts (only competing with touring stadium rock concerts).

While the AFL asserted throughout the 1990s that the patent covered virtually every aspect of the game (from the 50-yard field to the eight-man format), a 1998 lawsuit (Arena Football League v. Professional Indoor Football League) established that the patent specifically covered the rebound net feature, meaning that competitors could not use this aspect of the rules.

The AFL signed a major network television broadcasting contract with NBC, and eventually launched an official minor league, af2, beginning in 2000.

This effort basically served two purposes: one as a developmental league for the AFL, and as a place where former collegiate players could develop while at the same time learning and becoming accustomed to the unique arena rules, and secondly as a pre-emptive way of shutting out potential new indoor football competitors (this was especially important as the 2007 expiration of Foster's patent on the rebound nets approached).

Late in the summer of 2009, with the team owners unable to agree on a plan for making the league viable again the AFL announced that it was folding, eventually putting its assets up in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

At the end of the 2009 season, a gathering of af2 and remaining AFL team owners set out to form their own organization, originally known as Arena Football 1 (AF1).

AF1 went on to purchase all assets of the original AFL and af2, except for a few team names and logos owned by outside parties, in a December 2009 bankruptcy auction.

Five expansion teams, all in the Mid-Atlantic United States, were established over the next two years, before the league announced after the 2019 season that it was dissolving in a second Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

It generally targeted a higher caliber of player than the typical indoor league, with outdoor football veterans such as Johnny Manziel, Robert Turbin, Quinton Flowers, Quinn Porter, Shawn Oakman and Josh Gordon playing in the league's inaugural season, and Terrell Owens joining the following year (Michael Vick was also announced as a player midseason but would not play).

[23] After the league reorganized, the league abandoned ironman play and restored free substitution;[24] unlike in 2007, the reason for the 2024 change was in part to justify salary cuts[25][26] that were required when a previous commissioner—Lee Hutton, who was ousted in the reorganization[27]—made promises to cover higher salaries but had no revenue to fund such promises[28] (since under ironman, a player would fill the roles of what would have otherwise been two roster spots, justifying their higher price compared to a one-way player in other indoor leagues).

Arena Football One intends to continue the added point for a drop kick, as well as bringing in the deuce from previous fifty-yard game variants.

Video review is automatic in the final half-minute of regulation, all overtime periods, and all scoring plays and turnovers.

Prior to the 2018 season, during the final minute of the fourth quarter, the clock stopped if the offensive team had the lead and did not advance the ball past the line of scrimmage.

This prevented the "victory formation" (the offensive team merely kneeling down), or running other plays that are designed solely to exhaust the remaining time rather than to advance the ball downfield.

Other AFL to NFL graduates include Anthony Armstrong, Oronde Gadsden, Lincoln Coleman, Adrian McPherson, Rashied Davis, Jay Feely, David Patten, Rob Bironas, Antonio Chatman, Mike Vanderjagt, and Paul Justin.

Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur was a quarterback for the Omaha Beef and the Billings Outlaws in the National Indoor Football League (NIFL).

However, the NFL allowed to lapse an option it had negotiated allowing it to purchase up to 49% of Arena football, and as of early 2007 seemed to have backed away from any plan it may have had to use Arena football as a developmental league in any sort of "official" sense, perhaps in the interest of not undermining its then-existing "official" developmental league, NFL Europa.

At the end of the 2008 season, Jerry Jones and the Dallas Desperados (who had similar colors and logos to the Dallas Cowboys), Arthur Blank's Georgia Force, and the Colorado Crush (whose shareholders included Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and Rams then-minority owner Stan Kroenke) were still in the league.