The 2024 UFL season is winding down, and both ESPN and Fox drew strong (relatively speaking) audiences for this weekend’s Conference Championships.
Saturday’s USFL Conference Championship on ABC averaged 1.088 million viewers in the 3 p.m. ET window, the largest audience this season for a UFL game on one of Disney’s networks. In the timeslot, the game finished third among live sports events behind coverage of the PGA Tour Memorial on CBS (1.999 million) and Belmont Stakes pre-race coverage on Fox (1.447 million, beginning at 4 p.m. ET).
Saturday’s XFL Conference Championship on Fox averaged 1.274 million viewers in the primetime window, the network’s second most-watched UFL game of the season. Like the USFL Conference Championship, it finished third among live sports events in the window behind Game 2 of the NBA Finals on ABC (12.311 million) and ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast of Dodgers-Yankees (2.3 million).
Both games were healthily up from the playoff average of XFL and USFL games last year on Fox, NBC, and ESPN (748,000).
With one game to go, the 2024 UFL season is averaging 832,000 viewers across all networks, up 34% from the full USFL/XFL seasons (619,000).
The UFL’s inaugural season concludes with the Championship game on Sunday. Fox will air the matchup between the Birmingham Stallions and San Antonio Brahmas at 5 p.m. ET. The Brahmas finished 3-7 in the 2023 XFL season, while the Stallions won the USFL title in both 2022 and 2023.
[Data via Sports Media Watch]
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.