ArenaBowl XXXIII was the 33rd edition of the ArenaBowl, the championship game for the 2024 Arena Football League season. It took place at the American Dream Center, an ice rink located inside American Dream Meadowlands, a shopping mall and entertainment complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 19, 2024. It is the first since the original league's bankruptcy in 2019 and the reestablishment of the AFL in 2024.[1] The game featured the Albany Firebirds facing off against the Billings Outlaws who had faced each other earlier in the season in Billings winning 36-35.
Billings won the Arenabowl 46-41 for their first ArenaBowl championship.
Venue
ArenaBowl XXXIII was the first ArenaBowl hosted on a neutral site since ArenaBowl XXVI. The site was originally selected as the Target Center, home of the Minnesota Myth. However, this was dropped when the Myth folded and Myth co-owner Lee Hutton was expelled from his post as league commissioner.
On June 27, 2024, the league announced a new venue for the game would be held at American Dream Center, an ice rink located inside American Dream Meadowlands, a large retail complex and entertainment facility located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, adjacent to the Meadowlands Sports Complex and not far from MetLife Stadium. [2][3] The choice of a shopping mall for the event drew widespread attention, with Matt Reigle of Outkick describing it as "either the coolest thing I've ever seen or the saddest,"[4] a former AFL broadcaster writing for Barstool Sports praising it as an example of the league's reputation for being willing to try new things,[5] and Karl Rasmussen of Sports Illustrated commenting that the lack of traditional angled seating or a press box had consequences for the CBS Sports Network television broadcast, which largely operated from a single high camera, giving unusually angled views of the action.[6] CBS Sports Network commentator Ari Wolfe himself commented that the situation was "unlike anything we've ever seen."[7]
Teams
This was the second consecutive ArenaBowl appearance for Albany, who appeared in and won ArenaBowl XXXII, the last ArenaBowl of the previous Arena Football League as the Albany Empire in 2019; the Empire had also won two National Arena League titles in the interim in 2021 and 2022.[8] This was Billings's first league championship appearance in its current incarnation and the fifth for the Billings Outlaws brand overall, the first since the 2010 United Bowl. The two teams were the first and second ranked teams in the AFL in the 2024 regular season. In the two teams' regular season matchup, the Outlaws, using rules the team had pushed to bring in from Champions Indoor Football as part of that league's merger with the AFL (and which Albany had themselves used to win a game under similar circumstances against the West Texas Desert Hawks four weeks prior),[9] scored a touchdown, four-point conversion and a deuce (a kickoff through the Firebirds' uprights) in a five-second span to win their week 9 contest 36–35.[10] Albany and Billings each advanced to the ArenaBowl by defeating the Salina Liberty[8] and Nashville Kats, respectively, in the AFL playoffs (Billings having avenged its lone regular season loss against the Kats in said game).[11]
BIL – Hunter Swoboda 1-yard run (Bailey Giffen kick), 6:08. Outlaws 33–19. Drive: 3 plays, 6 yards, 2:41.
ALB – Jake Molonich 1-yard run (Darius Prince pass from Jake Medlock, Darius Prince pass from Jake Medlock), 1:38. Outlaws 33–29. Drive: 7 plays, 48 yards, 4:49.
Fourth quarter
BIL – Duane Brown 9-yard pass from Isaac Harker (kick failed), 14:55. Outlaws 39–29. Drive: 3 plays, 17 yards, 1:43.
