UFL sees modest TV gains despite attendance decline

With just the United Football League championship remaining, viewership for the UFL on Fox, ABC, and ESPN is up marginally year-over-year. Still, the modest gains do little to answer lingering questions about the league’s ability to grow.

Regular series games on Fox averaged 670,000 viewers in 2026, up 4% from 2025. Across all ESPN networks (including NFL Network), UFL regular-season games averaged 686,000 viewers, up 8%. On ABC, games averaged 941,000 viewers, up 14%. ABC accounted for 8 of the 10 most-watched UFL games this season.

In the first round of the UFL playoffs, DC Defenders-Orlando Storm averaged 1.01 million viewers, down slightly from 1.10 million for Michigan Panthers-Birmingham Stallions in the same window last year. On Fox, Louisville Kings-St. Louis Battlehawks averaged 1.07 million viewers, up 23% from Defenders-Battlehawks in the same Fox window last year.

Note that comparisons to previous years may be affected by Nielsen’s shift to the new Big Data + Panel methodology, which has generally boosted live sports viewership by 15%. As a result, some or all of the relatively small year-over-year increases could be attributable to the change in methodology rather than shifts in viewer behavior.

The lack of major viewership increases for the UFL in 2026 is part of a growing set of signals of issues for the spring football league. Despite removing teams in Memphis, Michigan, and San Antonio in exchange for Columbus, Louisville, and Orlando, league-wide regular-season attendance was down 20% from 2025 to an average of 10,501. Only 16 games drew 10,000 or more fans, compared to 31 in the inaugural season of the XFL in 2023.

That being said, playoff games averaging a million viewers show there is certainly some interest in the league. But the UFL’s inability to significantly grow its television audience or attendance in recent years raises questions about its long-term trajectory.