The Vancouver Ravens' whirlwind bid to rejoin the National Lacrosse League after a three-year hiatus has ended in failure, the league announced Friday.

As a result, Boston will be the only new franchise to enter the league in 2008.

Vancouver was given conditional approval on 19 June to return for the upcoming NLL season, provided that, by Thursday, the team signed an acceptable arena lease and sold at least 2500 season tickets.

It is the latter condition which appears to have killed the bid, with the Ravens falling well short of the season ticket goal but reportedly having written commitments in hand which would have made up the difference.

The Ravens announced Monday that they had reached an agreement to play at General Motors Place, the original Ravens' home and also the home arena of the National Hockey League's Vancouver Canucks. This came about a week after lease talks with smaller, older Pacific Coliseum fell apart.

"We're disappointed," Bob Whitsett, who organized the current ownership group, said. "But by the end of the day, we couldn't get it done in time. We couldn't close."

The Ravens began play in 2002, surviving multiple ownership crises before finally suspending operations just prior to the start of the 2005 season.