Could spring pro football really be around for good?
The last five decades are littered with the carcasses of non-NFL leagues that were announced to great fanfare and quickly sputtered out. Even the NFL shut down its European league in 2007 after 15-plus seasons.
But the new United Football League, a byproduct of the merger late last year of the USFL and XFL, is nearing the end of its first season with better TV ratings than the average of those two leagues last year, though there’s widespread poor attendance outside of one market, St. Louis (take that, NFL and Stan Kroenke).
The regular season ends this weekend, with the championship game on June 16.
“With this merger, the outlook for spring football is promising, and we are pleased with the results to the midpoint of the season,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch told an earnings call earlier this month. Fox owned the USFL, and RedBird Capital the XFL, so the parties, along with Dwayne Johnson and his ex-wife Dany Garcia, collectively own the UFL.
Fox’s President, Insights and Analytics, Mike Mulvihill boasted on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the UFL’s ratings pacing with far more established leagues. And through nine weeks of the season, the UFL says its ratings across Fox, ABC, and ESPN are averaging 816,000 viewers, up 31 percent from last year’s combined separate USFL and XFL seasons.
How’s the UFL holding up against other spring sports? Average viewership to date on broadcast networks:
NHL Regular Season – 934k
UFL – 916k
EPL – 862k
WNBA – 811k
Pretty good company, I’d say. #HereToStay https://t.co/LfKHM4xP39
— Michael Mulvihill (@mulvihill79) May 29, 2024
But it’s not all good, and some are not overly impressed. For one, attendance in the seven markets outside St. Louis is anemic.
“Despite the encouraging TV ratings, the week 9 attendance figures are dismal,” UFLNewsHub wrote. “Last week’s attendance figures ranked a healthy 63,413, but this week’s total of 33,298 reflected a drop of more than 30,000 fans. While three of the four cities hosting had already been eliminated from the playoffs, the league has an ongoing issue of in-person attendance at these locations, and putting ‘butts in the seats’ remains a challenge.”
Eric Galko, a football operation executive with the 2020 XFL, which shuttered due to the pandemic, had a harsh take on the quality of play, which he partially ascribed to the league marketing itself as a place for players who don’t make NFL rosters.
Johnson has promoted the XFL, and now the UFL, as a place for player 54 (NFL rosters are capped at 53 players).
“I don’t think the model is ‘bad NFL,’ can never be guys who aren’t of NFL quality,” Galko said. “And I think that just branding alone might scare off quarterbacks and offensive linemen and other players. I mean, those positions tend to be guys that will leave the sport and do something else, more than other positions. And I think you’ve really got to have a product and a brand and a vision to be ‘Hey, this is worth sticking around because of the marketing opportunities with the chance to get back in the NFL.’
“The spring leagues have kind of shifted more towards, in my opinion, kind of not NFL-worthy and I’m not sure viewership is going to kind of continue to stay high if it’s not NFL-worthy, and I’m not sure a lot of players will take that jump to do that.”
Lee Berke is a sports media consultant and he would take issue with the ratings being considered enviable so far.
“Not surprising in that you have a single unified football league marketing games (versus) two competitive leagues marketing against each other back in 2023,” he said of the rise in ratings from last year. “The numbers are decent. The challenge is whether the league itself will become profitable and sustainable for the long haul.”
Asked whether Fox’s hunt for content means the league is safe, Berke responded, “Ultimately, any sports property has to be profitable to be sustainable. Equity ownership by a media outlet can help, but it still needs to pencil out.”
The UFL does have a few other things going for it. Since 2019, a spring league has been active every year other than 2021 (2019-Alliance of American Football; 2020-XFL; 2022-USFL; 2023-USFL, XFL; and 2024-UFL). That suggests an appetite for the product.
The question is cost.
Fox does not break out UFL financials in its earnings reports, but market observers say it is safe to say the league is losing tens of millions of dollars. Better attendance, growing TV ratings, and improved commercial revenue would all help. Cost reductions are likely coming too as the UFL works through the merger of the XFL and USFL.
Assuming the UFL returns next season, the league will have an entire offseason to get its marketing efforts in place to secure more fans in seats. That said, runaway costs have doomed so many spring leagues before; it’s hard to escape the reality that staging football games is an expensive proposition.
So while the UFL has had some promising indicators in year one, year two, though likely, is not a sure thing.
