The Arena Football League (AFL) is the highest level of professional indoor American football in the United States. It was founded in <answer>1987</answer> by Jim Foster, making it the third longest-running professional football league in North America, after the Canadian Football League and the National Football League. It is played indoors on a 68-yard field (about half the distance of an NFL field), resulting in a faster-paced and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Foster, a former executive of the United States Football League and the National Football League.
What was the inaugural year of the AFL?
1987