American Football: NFL owners disband World League

THE World League of American Football, which brought the sport to London and two other European cities, was wound up by the National Football owners at a meeting in Dallas yesterday.

The meeting, which was called in response to the NFL's loss of an anti-trust court case last week, also voted to postpone plans to launch two expansion teams in the NFL in 1994, which had been scheduled to be selected on 20 October.

The verdict against the NFL, made in a federal court in Minneapolis, awarded dollars 1.6m to four NFL players and ruled that the league's limited free agency system was illegal.

The court ruling will force the NFL to negotiate a new labour contract with the players.

The NFL commisioner, Paul Tagliabue, said that if the World League is eventually revived, possibly in time for a 1994 season, it would be oriented more toward Europe, where it proved much more popular than in the United States.

The World League, which was launched in 1991, featured teams in London, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Montreal and six US cities. It drew consistently poor television ratings in the US, where it was screened on the ABC network and a cable channel.

Most of the players on the overseas teams were Americans, who were supplemented by players from the home nations. The London Monarchs, who played their home games at Wembley Stadium, won the inaugural World Bowl in 1991, beating the Barcelona Dragons in the final.

Tagliabue said the NFL might still stick to its timetable and expand into two new cities in 1994, if more pressing issues are resolved.

'Right now, the priorities are labour and a new television contract,' he said. 'It's a matter of priorities.'