The second year of the UFL did not get off to a great start, in comparison to its first year.
Mike Mitchell has the TV numbers for the four games. Friday night’s opener between the St. Louis Battlehawks and the Houston Roughnecks averaged 690,000 viewers on Fox. Last year’s opener, on a Saturday afternoon, generated an average of 1.81 million viewers.
Saturday afternoon’s game between the San Antonio Brahmas and the Arlington Renegades, also televised by Fox, averaged 584,000 viewers.
Sunday’s ESPN doubleheader between the Memphis Showboats and Michigan Panthers and Birmingham Stallions and D.C. Defenders averaged 569,000 viewers and 395,000 viewers, respectively.
In contrast, the four Week 1 games in 2024 did 1.81 million, 1.349 million, 960,000 and 703,000.
Across the board, it’s a significant drop for the UFL. And while it was a crowded sports weekend, last year’s season started on a busy sports weekend in late March.
Nine weeks of the 2025 regular season remain. And we’re rooting for the UFL. At some point, however, more people need to be regularly consuming it, if it’s going to break the longstanding trend of failure when football is played in anything other than football season.
