Baltimore Brigade

The Baltimore Brigade is a professional arena football team based in Baltimore, Maryland that plays in the Arena Football League (AFL) since 2017. The team's home arena is the Royal Farms Arena. The franchise is owned by Monumental Sports & Entertainment (Ted Leonsis, chairman), which also owns the Washington Valor of the AFL, Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association (NBA), Washington Mystics of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League (NHL).

History
The Arena Football League and Monumental Sports & Entertainment both announced on November 14, 2016, that it had granted an expansion franchise to begin play for the 2017 season in Baltimore. Monumental Sports & Entertainment is operated by Ted Leonsis, the majority owner, who had also previously been granted an expansion team in the Washington Valor to begin play the same season.

Although other indoor football leagues have hosted teams in Baltimore in the past (such as the Baltimore Blackbirds and Baltimore Mariners), this is the first Arena Football League franchise to be located in Baltimore, and the first in the state of Maryland since the Washington/Maryland Commandos, a charter league franchise that played in the DC suburb of Landover for its first season.

On December 14, 2016, former Los Angeles KISS coach Omarr Smith was named the team's first head coach.

On January 25, 2017, the team was officially announced as the Baltimore Brigade, named for the military history and in reference to the War of 1812 and the inspiration for the penning of the poem that would later become known as "The Star-Spangled Banner", the U.S.A.'s national anthem.

2018, First ArenaBowl
On July 20, 2018, the Brigade reached their first ArenaBowl championship game, ArenaBowl XXXI, after defeating the Philadelphia Soul in the second leg of a two-game aggregate playoff series. They won the first game, 57-45, on July 15th, then the second, 53-41. In ArenaBowl XXXI they hosted against the Washington Valor, who scored a 69-55 upset victory.

2019
In a January 2019 interview with Forbes, Leonsis noted that the Brigade was not particularly successful in regard to finances, and that he mainly used the team and its Washington counterpart to experiment with ideas to later use with his more prominent sports properties such as the Wizards, Mystics and Capitals.