In the 1970s National Football League (NFL) announced merger with of American Football League (AFL) with NFL. The motivation behind the merger that led to creation of NFL was united level of operations of the merged sporting entity and integration of the regular season schedules of AFL and NFL. AFL had come into existence in the form of a rival league to NFL. Before the merger NFL and AFL were competing over fans, over players and even over coaches. This highly intense level of competition was not doing any good for both NFL and AFL and both were caught struggling in a bid to outdo each other. There was an unspoken agreement was reached between the two leagues that stated that NFL and AFL will not sign the other league’s player. However this unspoken agreement was broken in the year 1966 when NFL’s New York Giants signed place-kicker Gogolak who was part of AFL’s Buffalo Bills. A bidding war was imminent and fast approaching and if this bidding war was to actually break out both NFL and AFL would be found wanting and struggling for resources in the long run. This was not a desirable situation and to avoid this situation of bidding war and to avoid the possibility of creating financial difficulties for them the owners of both NFL and AFL started talking about a merger.
The merger was successful due to a combination of more than one factor. First of all there was a clear sense of purpose and objectives of the merger were clearly spelt out. Post the merger the league was called NFL and was split into the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). All eight of the original AFL teams were absorbed by NFL. A tangible synergy was created and this led to the emergence of a sporting league that was highly popular powerful both at the same time. Secondly there was clear vision that was supporting the merger. One of the agreements of the merger was that the two leagues will combine to form an expanded league with 24 teams, which would be increased to 26 teams and then to 28 teams by 1970 or so. This clarity of action plan and thought gave the merged league a sense of direction that paved way for its success and growth without any constraints that the individual leagues faced in the past.
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