As the kickoff of the inaugural Arena Football One season inches closer, the league is putting the final touches on its preparation before the season opener on March 8^th between Orlando and Southwest Kansas. How games will be distributed to fans at home has been unknown until recently as the league announced a partnership with VICE Sports to air its games as the official broadcast partner of AF1.

VICE’s “Sunday Nights in the Arena” will air live games every week starting on March 16^th and will be available on multiple cable providers such as Xfinity, Hulu + Live TV, Sling, and others. The league realizes that it also needs a more robust streaming and content strategy to avoid the fan experience woes of AFL last season. Enter EvergreenNOW, a new streaming platform that is looking to deliver an NFL-like viewing experience for fans of indoor football. I spoke to Evergreen CEO Michael DeAloia to better understand the partnership and its vision for delivering a compelling product to fans.

What is EvergreenNOW?

EvergreenNOW is a new venture from Evergreen Podcasts, which is a podcast network that DeAloia has been the CEO of since January 2017. The network was formerly named Front Porch People with a focus on community style podcasts. Think of a modern interpretation of gathering by the radio for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the Great Depression.

When DeAloia took over, he quickly realized that podcast listening was a decidedly individualistic activity, and that while the idea of gathering to listen to a podcast was good in theory, it was not how people consume the medium. As a result, the company rebranded to Evergreen, with the thought that it would be a place for “evergreen content”. Since then, downloads have surged, amassing over 34 million downloads in 2024 and projecting to 44 million this year according to DeAloia.

The company ethos is centered around content that is thought-provoking and filled with excellent storytelling. The genres of the shows are plentiful from history to politics to lifestyle content. The evolution of this content was moving into video. What started as a desire to increase the network's presence on YouTube has transformed into the desire to venture into streaming, which is how the idea for EvergreenNOW was formed.

A free ad-supported service, EvergreenNOW, is focusing on independent films to start, with multiple titles set to be available with launch. An opportunity that the company saw was to incorporate its audio podcasts into the video streaming service, which is an idea that hasn’t been fully explored by the in the market.

With the creation of the service came the realization that having live sports was crucial to ensuring the usage and stickiness of the platform with potential users. As a new venture, DeAloia decided to reach out to smaller professional sports leagues to see what was possible. This led to a conversation with Arena Football One, where two entities with similar growth goals have formed a key partnership aimed at accelerating their collective visibility.

Telling the Arena Story

Originally, Evergreen wanted to have a catalog of older games and interviews, similar to what ESPN Classic offered years ago before it was shuttered by Disney. Instead, the vision that AF1 had for the network was more involved than that. What the league was looking for was a true partner that could grow with the league. This prospect was incredibly exciting to DeAloia and from there the possibilities have begun to expand.

From Evergreen’s perspective, AF1 was a great fit because of the inherent storytelling nature that is presented by the players, coaches, and teams of the league. These are players that are trying to climb up the football ecosystem to fulfill a lifelong dream. Throughout AF1, coaches are insistent that they want to help their players elevate to higher levels within football because those are winning players. That sort of “from nothing to something” story is timeless and filled with so many variations that it is always engaging.

Evergreen believes these stories can be told via live broadcasts in addition to behind-the-scenes footage and official league podcasts with league insiders. With storytelling at its core, the plan is for a full spectrum of coverage for the league, something that was sorely lacking from the AFL last season. The podcasts will be aired on the Evergreen network as well as being available on EvergreenNOW.

From a 10,000-foot view this is an immediate improvement in coverage for fans of the indoor game. Games will be available both live and five days after they air for free on EvergreenNOW. Podcasts will cover the games in addition to profiling the ins and out of the league. In this sense, the product is becoming more like the NFL and college football from a coverage perspective. Where content has been lacking in the past, Evergreen and AF1 have committed to more coverage of higher quality. It is a change that is a must to ensure the long-term viability of both the streaming platform and the league’s wide-ranging success.

Ensuring a Great Experience

If there was one word to describe the efforts put forth by both AF1 and Evergreen regarding delivering their product for this upcoming season it would be serious. It is incredibly clear that they are taking multiple factors into account to provide a launch with as little issues as possible. DeAloia understands that there will be speed bumps when it comes to anything involving live streaming but insists that there will be constant communication between all parties to resolve issues as soon as they may arise.

What does this look like? There will be regular quality control meetings with the league to make sure that the final product for viewers at home is continuously improving. Evergreen has created a compelling graphics package with the goal of the presentation mirroring the style of what people are used to seeing on Saturdays and Sundays with college football and the NFL.

Any company venturing into live broadcasting will run into bandwidth issues, as was evidenced from Netflix’s foray into this space with the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight. The way that Evergreen looks to approach this problem is by being in constant communication with video providers Vimeo and AF1 to make sure that problems are solved immediately.

The goal ultimately is to have a product that will be on par with the NFL, which is admittedly a lofty aspiration. But everything is in place to start this venture successfully. There will be substantial investment in social media marketing, prominent placement on the Evergreen website for AF1, and ads on big networks like ESPN and FOX Sports 1. The intent here is to bring fans to the streaming network and expose them to the other content that will be offered in the way of podcasts, animated films, and independent movies.

The question that could be asked is why Arena Football One, a new league trying to find its footing, didn’t try to ink a deal with a more established player. The previous year’s Arena Bowl was aired by CBS Sports, for instance. That potential critique ignores the bigger picture that was the folly of the previous AFL. Aligning with a similar upstart ensures that the league will get proper attention and be the focus. That sort of prioritization could not happen with a larger entity.

Repeatedly through the announcement and leadup to kickoff, the league has insisted that it has designs on longevity. The goal is to make smart and prudent decisions to secure the long-term success and health of the league. Building together with a streaming partner that has committed to producing podcasts and documentaries gives the league a prominent presence that can help to capture mind share in ways that previous leagues have been unable to.

If Evergreen is successful in their approach, then it could up potential opportunities for professional leagues in other sports like baseball, volleyball, and soccer. But for now, the focus is on the success of AF1, where both entities are dependent on one another for success. The plan is in place, and it seems like a good one. An all-inclusive content strategy as opposed to just airing games, where both are invested. It’s a somewhat new strategy in the digital age and is one that I’m hoping is successful.