BLOOMINGTON - United Indoor Football and the Intense Football League announced Wednesday that the two indoor football leagues have officially merged. | Extreme page

All 17 teams from the two leagues voted unanimously in favor of the merger, IFL co-owner Tommy Benizio said.

The leagues issued a joint press release announcing the agreement. The Pantagraph reported Monday that the two sides had been in talks and were headed toward a merger.

Benizio said a few legal details have yet to be worked out but added that both leagues have dissolved and have agreed to become one organization under a yet to be determined name.

Details about the new league - its new name and look as well as conference and divisional alignments - are expected to be announced Aug. 1. An owners' meeting is scheduled for September.

Both leagues will have concluded their fourth season of play and will stage a joint championship Aug. 2 when the Sioux Falls Storm hosts the IFL champion in the National Indoor Bowl Championship game. The IFL winner will be determined Monday when the Louisiana Swashbucklers play the Corpus Christi Hammerheads.

"Today is one of the best days, if not the best, for indoor football," IFL president and co-owner Chad Dittman said in a statement. "What the merger of the NFL and the AFL did for professional football in the 1960s, this partnership will do for us. It can and will lead to bigger and better things."

UIF executive director Paul Aaron said the new league will be owned and operated equally by the teams similar to the way major-league sports function.

"We now have a solid base and strength in both quality and quantity of existing franchises. We can now move forward and accept the challenges of growing our sport as a collective whole rather than simply maintaining the status quo," he said.