Australian Football League

Industry:	Sports
Founded:	1897
Country:	Australia
Website:	www.afl.com.au
Facebook:	AFL
Twitter:	@AFL
Key People
Andrew Demetriou, CEO Andrew Callerall, AFL General Managers
nTLDStats
TLDs:	1
Registrations:	89
More Info: nTLDStats

The Australian Football League (AFL) is the primary organization responsible in managing and promoting the the highest professional football competition in Australia. AFL is composed of 17 football teams within Australia and it is one of the most popular sporting events with 36, 428 average attendees per game in 2011.

History

Originally, the Australian Football League was known as the Victorian Football League (VFL) which was founded in 1897 football clubs including Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda and South Melbourne. Tom Wills is recognized as one of the founders of Australian Football. He introduced the sport in Australia 1857, developed the first rules of the game and formed the Melbourne Football Club in 1858. The sport became popular which paved the way to the establishment of the Victorian Football Club. By 1997 VFL was already composed of 16 teams. Due to its national expansion, its name was changed to Australian Football League.

Proposal for .afl Brand gTLD

On February 2012, AFL confirmed its application for the .afl Brand gTLD. According to AFL General Manager of Strategy and Marketing, the organizations applications for the .afl TLD is to ensure that its trademark isprotected and to promote the different football clubs and its partners within the AFL community. He said, "We think that it’s worth getting the trust and mark secured and getting the space secured, and then we’ll see what commercial opportunities and marketing opportunities [will] evolve over time." AFL hired Melbourne IT to develop the business plan and the application for the .afl gTLD with ICANN while the back-end registry solutions will be provided by ARI Registry.