UFL replaces ESPN’s old ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ slot over Women’s Elite Eight

ESPN revealed its upcoming UFL schedule on Thursday, and the announcement included several surprises about the network’s other live sports properties.

Since February of last year, when ESPN decided to opt out of its Sunday Night Baseball deal with MLB, there has been abundant speculation about how the network might choose to fill those marquee Sunday windows throughout the spring and summer. Awful Announcing put together a comprehensive list of the possibilities, and one of the most sure things seemed to be taking advantage of some opportunities to highlight the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, which overlaps with the beginning of baseball season.

Typically, the first Sunday Night Baseball window of the season on ESPN coincided with the Elite Eight of the women’s tournament, which would be played earlier in the day on ABC. While the midday broadcast network exposure has been good for the women’s tournament, it also meant that a pair of Elite Eight games would compete directly with the men’s tournament in the afternoon on CBS.

But without Sunday Night Baseball to account for, the possibility of placing those women’s Elite Eight games in primetime on ESPN, absent of competition from the men, seemed to make all the sense in the world. Alas, that is not what ESPN and the NCAA decided on. At least not this year. As Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch noted on X, ESPN has given the Sunday primetime window to the UFL, the spring football league entering its third season.

UFL is also the first event to get the old ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ window on ESPN. Will occupy the 8 PM ET slot on ESPN 3/29.

Surprised — highly surprised — that the Women’s Elite Eight did not get moved to that slot. But it stays in a daytime window on ABC opposite men’s.

— Sports Media Watch (@paulsen_smw) January 22, 2026

For reference, the pair of women’s Elite Eight games on ABC last year averaged 3.25 million viewers, despite competing with the men’s games on CBS. The UFL on ESPN averaged 651,000 viewers during its regular season last year.

To be sure, it’s possible that ESPN or the NCAA simply decided the Elite Eight was better off airing in the afternoon windows on ABC, despite facing stiff competition from the men’s tournament. That’s an entirely reasonable argument. After all, last year’s two other Elite Eight games, which aired Monday night on ESPN, averaged just 2.65 million viewers. It’s no guarantee that the Sunday games would attract bigger audiences Sunday night on ESPN than they already do Sunday afternoon on ABC.

But still, it seems like a risk worth taking, if only for a year, just to see if moving away from the men’s tournament had benefits. ABC is historically reluctant to cede primetime windows to live sports, so maybe resistance from the Disney-owned broadcast network had something to do with the decision. However, even without an ABC presence, it’s possible that those games could’ve done better on ESPN alone if moved to primetime.

We won’t know. But now that ESPN’s 2026 schedule is beginning to trickle out, we’ll have a better idea of how the network plans to fill the rest of the void left by Sunday Night Baseball soon.