The United Football League’s 2026 season is more proof that while there’s a market for spring pro football, it’s not as big as its adherents want you to believe. I’ve written about this before, and everything I said there still applies. While there has been plenty of drama on the field and on the trade wires through five weeks, the attendance story looms largest.
Despite moving from some big or disappointing markets and some larger stadiums into smaller stadiums built for soccer, the UFL is still not able to get people to attend their games in any great numbers. They’re probably better off financially because they’re likely paying lower rents to play in Columbus and Orlando than in Detroit and Memphis, but the actual fan interest is not there. Here are the UFL’s announced attendance numbers halfway through the 2026 season:
| Team | G | Total | Average | Median | High | Low |
| St. Louis Battlehawks | 2 | 51,400 | 25,700 | 25,700 | 31,191 | 20,209 |
| Birmingham Stallions | 2 | 26,460 | 13,230 | 13,230 | 18,340 | 8,120 |
| Louisville Kings | 2 | 25,116 | 12,558 | 12,558 | 14,034 | 11,082 |
| Columbus Aviators | 2 | 23,539 | 11,770 | 11,770 | 14,810 | 8,729 |
| DC Defenders | 2 | 20,107 | 10,054 | 10,054 | 12,167 | 7,940 |
| Orlando Storm | 3 | 29,447 | 9,816 | 9,735 | 11,127 | 8,585 |
| Dallas Renegades | 4 | 26,772 | 6,693 | 6,461 | 8,717 | 5,133 |
| Houston Gamblers | 3 | 17,790 | 5,930 | 5,166 | 7,744 | 4,880 |
| UFL TOTAL | 20 | 220,631 | 11,032 | 8,723 | 31,191 | 4,880 |
The league’s flagship franchise (at least at the gate), the St. Louis Battlehawks, saw its average attendance dip 14 percent last season and it’s down another 13 percent this season. Their most recent crowd – 20,209 against Birmingham on April 12 – would still be the biggest crowd for every other team, but it’s the smallest one in the team’s history.
The Renegades moved from Arlington to Frisco this season, and their attendance is off 31 percent from a year ago. (Luckily for them, they have just one more home game – and that will be played on a military base in Killeen on May 15.)
The DC Defenders (who will host the United Bowl on June 13, and might even be in the game) are down 23 percent in average announced attendance and are half-filling Audi Field.
Houston’s up (four percent), but they had nowhere to go but up and are still the worst-drawing team in the league. Columbus and Louisville are drawing okay (they’re above the league average), and are filling a high percent of their stadiums’ capacity (85 percent in Louisville, 59 percent in Columbus, with Dallas filling 61 percent of a downsized Toyota Stadium), but is that what you think of when someone says “there’s a huge market for spring football?”
Without St. Louis, this league’s median announced crowd is 8,723. That’s just terrible for as much effort is being put into this. Now, at the end of the day, this is a TV show, and there is an audience. It will probably survive as long as its half-owners, Fox, decide the programming costs are worth it.
“When the NFL Draft on ESPN on Thursday night has 14 million viewers in April, it just shows you people are dying for football,” said billionaire league owner Mike Repole. That’s not altogether true. People are dying for more NFL football. Just watching 22 random guys hitting each other for three hours is not what they’re dying for.
