Antonio Brown slams Arena League for wrongfully kicking out Albany Empire for previous owner’s wrongdoings - “League refused to help us"

Antonio Brown never seems to leave controversy behind. His latest issue stems from the National Arena League kicking out Albany Empire, the team he owns.

He has now come out firing back on the allegations by the league, saying it was them who refused to help the franchise. In a statement to MLFootball, the team alleged that they were charged $1.5 million by New York because of the previous owner's wrongdoing, which is something they are pursuing legally.

They then went on to say why other costs on top of that charge proved prohibitive:

"Teams in this league only make $500 to $800k a year in revenue. Our worker’s compensation policy crippled this season from the jump and ours is the highest in the league by double or triple. And we aren’t even factoring in payroll, travel, food, etc. The league refused to help us."

They added that it made scant financial sense to continue like this:

"From a business standpoint, it wasn’t smart to move forward without help from the league. Teams don’t get paid for away games. When we travel for away games we make $0. After adding all of this up and forecasting the rest of the season, it didn’t make sense."

The franchise even asked proof of the assessment fees being paid by other teams in the league but were allegedly denied that access. In fact, they said that without Antonio Brown, they would have probably moved the team away from New York. They also justified their reduction in players payroll, alleging:

"Then the state of New York said our player payroll numbers have to be under $116k or we would be penalized next year so we had to cut all our players with high salaries. We had the highest payroll in the league at the beginning. So the league is kicking us out over $20k but we paid $1.5 million to the state of New York.”

Antonio Brown's Albany Empire kicked off after refusing to pay assessment fee and fines

Under ownership terms, all franchises are required to pay one-seventh of the league operating budget via monthly transactions. The NAL said that Antonio Brown made the April payment but didn't pay the May installment. Nor did he pay a $1,000 fine for conduct detrimental to the league. Brown also challenged the April payment, which was credited back to him.

The league said that they felt that Antonio Brown was not going to assessment fee or the fine going forward and called an emergency meeting, where they terminated Albany Empire's membership.