Make no mistake, the United Football League is a TV show.
That’s why, in the face of declining attendance, the league’s officials are still saying they’re doing fine.
And maybe they are, given that Fox owns half the league and just wants live sports programming in that time of year. Their ability to withstand losses is stronger than most previous spring leagues.
But the numbers don’t lie – the supposed “massive market for spring football” just isn’t there. After two years post-merger between the neo-USFL and neo-XFL, actual game attendance is lackluster everywhere but in St. Louis – and that market saw a big drop in average crowds this season.
Here are the numbers from the 2025 season. The last column represents the percentage change in average announced attendance compared to the 2024 season.
| Team | G | Total | Average | Median | High | Low | 2024 | Change |
| St. Louis Battlehawks | 6 | 177,223 | 29,537 | 30,064 | 32,115 | 26,684 | 34,365 | -14.0% |
| DC Defenders | 5 | 65,132 | 13,026 | 12,624 | 14,638 | 12,254 | 14,143 | -7.9% |
| Michigan Panthers | 5 | 58,403 | 11,681 | 11,013 | 16,014 | 9,674 | 8,134 | 43.6% |
| San Antonio Brahmas | 4 | 44,418 | 11,105 | 10,374 | 14,427 | 9,244 | 11,888 | -6.6% |
| Birmingham Stallions | 5 | 53,278 | 10,656 | 10,126 | 14,056 | 9,127 | 10,255 | 3.9% |
| Arlington Renegades | 5 | 48,817 | 9,763 | 9,614 | 10,114 | 9,544 | 9,887 | -1.3% |
| Houston Roughnecks | 5 | 28,562 | 5,712 | 6,613 | 7,124 | 4,007 | 7,056 | -19.0% |
| Memphis Showboats | 5 | 19,958 | 3,992 | 4,373 | 4,753 | 2,044 | 6,893 | -42.1% |
| UFL TOTAL | 40 | 495,791 | 12,395 | 10,082 | 32,115 | 2,044 | 12,828 | -3.4% |
Overall, the league was more or less flat, with a drop of just over three percent. But five of the eight teams in the league saw drops bigger than that, including a huge drop in Memphis, a smaller but still alarming decline in Houston, and what has to be a concerning falloff in St. Louis, the league’s flagship market.
The Michigan Panthers had the highest percentage increase in their crowds, but still only drew under 12,000 a game. That’s 12,000 a game in a major city with the most popular sport in the culture.
In St. Louis, where a lot of the appeal is spite, let’s be honest, even the Battlehawks saw a 14 percent falloff in attendance compared to last year. And while, yes, their team wasn’t in the title game (again), St. Louis fans were about half as interested in attending this year’s final as they were in attending last year.
People simply won’t pay to watch guys who were most recently working at Dunkin’ chase their NFL dreams, at least not in any significant numbers. Certainly not big enough numbers to sustain a professional football league in most circumstances. Having Fox as half-owner of the league helps in that regard, because, again, this is a TV show.
As long as there’s an audience, there will likely be a UFL. But there’s no massive audience for this product. At all.
Hi Kenn;
Agreed, the UFL merger is a disaster. But it didn’t have to happen. I can understand why Fox wanted to stage the first couple of seasons of the USFL in a single/dual site. Costs can be controlled and, lets be honest, you aren’t going to sell many more tickets to a brand new “home” team in a market that has been burned before than you will in a neutral site. It also gives you a couple of years to work out the obvious kinks in the rules/play before appearing in front of actual home town crowds.
Making no effort to play in front of these team’s alleged home towns was going to be a big problem going forward for the USFL, however. I know the XFL did have ‘home’ stadia, but they also have the whole Vince McMahon Dwayne Johnson baggage to carry. That’s a lot to ask people to overlook
The problem was and is the merger itself. It took away any ‘historic’ benefit of bringing back the old USFL teams and crushed it under the sideshow that is WWE ownership. Add to that, the players are not tied to their teams by any long term contracts and you have yahtzee football… fans are supposed to show up and cheer for a group of guys wearing the uniforms but who may have little or no connection to the people who played there last year. It’s a tough sell to sports fans.
For all it’s faults, the original USFL had built a (small) platform from which to work. Spring football was accepted and growing in a few markets (and failing miserably in several others for all the usual reasons, overexpansion, home stadium issues, undercapitalized ownership…). Lamarr Hunt showed America how to (TWICE) start brand new leagues. Job one is that you have to have a lot of money from committed owners. They aren’t going to make money for the first five years, and some may never make money. But you have to show the fans you are committed to being in their city long term to get them on board. They’ve been burned too many times. That means finding owners who are willing to lose money for 5-10 years in order to build a league. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.
Had Fox stayed with the USFL model and moved to, say, ten or twelve teams playing out of actual home markets, I am convinced they could now be on the verge of sustainability (not big profits, but breaking even on average). They originally claimed they spent $250m to set up the league and had committed another $250m to operating it for five years. IMO that was enough money to get it done, they just didn’t spend it wisely… and panicked and merged with the XFLii after it emerged from bankruptcy (where it should have stayed, frankly).
As you said, this is a TV property and nothing else. So really, why worry about game day revenues that are in the $150,000 range? Sure, that’s bad. But what you are building is a property for television… and in Fox’s case you spent way less than one year of NFL rights would cost and then threw in the towel. IF it takes five years to build a TV (and double the local) following, really, who cares? Do you want to build a tv property or don’t you?
There probably (definitely) isn’t going to be a time when spring football leagues outbid the NFL for talent. But you can ease the player losses by signing your (yes, not NFL ready) talent to longer term deals that keep them with their USFL team long enough for fans to bond with them. People want to see exciting football. And they want to identify with “their guys”.
Players may be reluctant to sign long term (3-5 year) deals if they just hope to become instant stars and sign with the NFL, but if their option is to stay on the loading dock at wal mart and hope for a training camp invitation next July, well, that’s their choice. Do you really want ‘those guys’ in your league?
I’m with the group who says “spring football will work when the owners/managers stop screwing it up”. The merged/failed UFL is just another example of that. Starting a new league in any sport is a decade long enterprise and you are going to lose money in most of those years. It’s the price of entry into the sporting landscape. Any owner or league operator who doesn’t understand that has no business in the business and should just hand their wallets to the NFL owners club (like always).
I appreciate that thoughtful reply, John!
I love “yahtzee football.” I think that encapsulates it pretty well.
Here’s the problem (well, one of them): absolutely zero players in this league want to be there. I suspect they are not interested in long-term contracts (except for the security), because they all believe they can play in the NFL. (Spoiler alert: they cannot, and that’s not an indictment of them – it’s just REALLY, REALLY hard to make and stick with an NFL team.)
And no one grew up a Houston Roughnecks fan. They’re trying to put fan loyalty in a microwave, when these are never going to be teams that engender that. (Memphis, oy, vey.)
The difference between starting a league today and starting one in 1960 (as the AFL did) or 1967 (as what became the NASL did) is that the sporting landscape has seriously changed in the interim. The AFL, ABA and WHA were (different modicums of) successful because the established league was not adequately serving the marketplace and not exploiting the depth of the player pool. In football’s case, the AFL embraced African-American players far more readily (perhaps out of necessity) than the NFL did, and mined HBCUs for talent who proved they could play. The NBA had few teams and (again_) few Black players, which the ABA used to their advantage. And the WHA knew there were many pro-quality players stuck in the minors because of the paucity of NHL teams.
The USFL “worked” (I put that in quotes because while it was 1000% more successful than any spring league since, it lost scads of money and had several basket case franchises) because they tried to go big. They abandoned Donald Dixon’s original concept of a low-cost, modest league as soon as they saw they could get guys to jump, or, in the famous case, leave school early. (Back then, you could literally poach an NFL starter for $100,000. You cannot do that today.)
Having your TV partner in an ownership position absolutely helps and yes, it’s cheaper football programming than you would get buying NFL rights. (Which Fox has obviously done as well.) It’s a TV show, and it has an audience, which is why it will likely continue.
But while it can create viewers and (in some places) can create ticket-buyers, I don’t know that it can ever create FANS, who actually care.
I grew up in Tampa. We CARED about the Bandits. No one in San Antonio cared about the Gunslingers, granted, and no one in Chicago cared about the post-Allen Blitz. But they still averaged 25,000 a game as a league and had their TV negotiators not been so completely naive, they could have worked with the audiences they were getting and gotten incrementally better contracts.
I don’t think spring football can work in any real sense. It can be sustainable for a bit, I guess, within the strict environment they’ve created, with Fox owning part of it and sub-leasing games to other networks and a limited schedule and I guess they do the hub in Dallas and fly guys out to games or whatever.
But you can’t engender fan loyalty with mercenaries who ( a ) don’t want to be there at all and ( b ) aren’t part of your community at all.
And football is – and always will be – the most expensive sport there is. Even though they’ve reduced costs through a number of measures (chief among them player salaries, but also not having true front offices and marketing budgets and people attempting to sell tickets), a robust football operation costs a lot of money. (Maybe not as much as the AAF was burning through in 2019, but a lot.)
And those of us who loved the USFL for its quirkiness, its unique value prop and its actual attempt TO BE BIG(GISH) LEAGUE know this is not that. And nothing will be or can be.
I don’t see a scenario where you can compete with the NFL for anybody. The money’s not there. The money of pro football changed drastically in the late 1980s and any real competitor – even a spring one, even a modest one – could not possibly make enough money back to justify the expenditures.
And today’s sportainment consumer is far more sophisticated and expects far more than the USFL could provide in 1984. There’s far more competition. There’s much more you have to provide in terms of amenities and access.
And the idea of player development being something someone wants to watch…I think most people would rather do that in the proper time of year, and with it wrapped in the emotional component of love of dear alma mater.
I think we have enough data to show that this can’t be done.