SECOND EUROPEAN LEAGUE BREAKS COVER
As revealed in a Gridiron opinion piece last week, the handful of teams that decided not to realign with the European League of Football are pressing ahead with their own competition for 2026.
With the breakaway European Football Alliance having itself been split by disagreements over the funding model for its planned rival to the ELF, several teams — including multiple champion Rhein Fire and 2022 champion Vienna Vikings, as well as the Berlin Thunder, Wroclaw Panthers and, potentially, the Munich Ravens — were notable absentees from last week’s reunion announcement from the ELF and EFA. Moreover, sources suggested that the teams still held the ambition of forming their own league, amid rumours that it had new teams lined up in London, Paris, Monaco and Switzerland.
That speculation has now become fact, with the unveiling of the American Football League Europe (AFLE) which, its founders claim, will provide a ‘new, stable home’ for the sport on the old continent. While the legal league name is AFLE, however, the founders insist that its ‘cultural identity’ will live under the banner of ‘The League: Europe’, providing ‘a modern, internationally accessible brand’ that reflects where European football is heading, not where it came from.
“Over the past weeks, we have worked quietly, but with absolute clarity of purpose, to build a league that stands on solid ground and honours the people who make this sport what it is: the players, the coaches, the families and the fans who carry football forward in Europe,” an official statement read. “Today, we are ready to share the first chapter of this new beginning.”
Created with the sole purpose ‘to finally give European football the stability and transparency it deserves’, the AFLE claims to be fully financed for the next five years by a committed US-based family office, providing a foundation that allows it to ‘build responsibly, without shortcuts, without improvisation, and without the instability the community has experienced in recent seasons’.
The newcomer has made its mission clear, laying out five tenets by which it intends to operate:
• Providing a safe, financially-secure environment for players and coaches to play football at the highest level;
• Putting players and coaches into an environment where compensation is reliable, operations are organised and long-term planning is finally possible;
• Protecting the integrity of the sport;
• Building a league that grows for the next decade, not just the next season;
• Being transparent with our entire community every step of the way
To ensure immediate operational strength, the new league has established its league headquarters in Hamburg, led by Frank Wendorf, one of the most experienced and trusted operations leaders in European American football, who brings much of his former team with him to enable continuity, reliability and knowledge of day-to-day football operations.
In addition, the AFLE will be guided during its launch phase by Till Grönemeyer, who will serve as head of the advisory board. Grönemeyer’s background is in building and scaling high-growth startups, adding an essential layer of structure, financial discipline and strategic clarity to the new league that needs to balance stability, innovation and long-term sustainability. The AFLE has already hired full-time staff across the core departments of operations, administration, rules and regulations, TV production, sales and marketing, statistics and IT, insisting that each is fully active, rather than merely symbolic.
Importantly, more than 60 European referees have already confirmed their participation, albeit with full freedom to work across competitions. This revelation ties in with the much-heralded announcement that officials who worked ELF games in 2025 were defecting wholsesale to the EFA’s planned league for 2026. With the core of the EFA now reuniting with the ELF, however, it remains to be seen whether there is any movement in the opposite direction, or whether the ‘full freedom to work across competitions’ means that the same crews could operate in both the ELF and AFLE.
Most intriguingly, perhaps, the new league claims that ‘a highly-respected European commissioner’ is preparing to take the helm, a move which would further strengthen governance and ensuring that the AFLE enters its inaugural season on a firm foundation. While no names have been revealed, speculation will naturally suggest ELF co-founder, and erstwhile commissioner, Patrick Esume is the man in question, despite the German insisting that he would focus on his expanding media roles having given up the reins of the league he started with Zeljko Karajica back in 2021.
While no teams were announced as part of the launch, the AFLE confirmed that, roughly in line with the information obtained by Gridiron last week, there would be representation from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Poland, UK. While Rhein, Vienna and Wroclaw account for three of those locations, Monaco stands out as a new base, while France, Italy and the UK already have teams apparently committed to the ‘new’ ELF, with teams in London and Milan due to see their first action in the 2027 season. It remains to be seen, too, whether the statement’s reference to ‘reigning champions’ is a hint at the possible resurrection of Stuttgart amongst the German contingent which, as in the early days of the original ELF, will dominate the initial AFLE landscape.
Already looking ahead, the announcement also revealed that ticket sales for the inaugural season would begin in January, with the first-ever AFLE Championship Game scheduled for September 6th at a yet-to-be-determined venue in Germany.
Initial reaction to the announcement was generally sceptical, with doubts expressed over the AFLE’s ability to muster enough teams to form a viable league, especially if it is relying on new entities being up and running by next May. Similarly, the divergence in opinion over best funding practices that split the EFA remain in play, with doubters wondering if the AFLE is heading down the same governance path as the original ELF, just as the new ELF ushers in a team-led era.