The quality of play is a direct result of part-time employment and short training camps. We learned 25 years ago the ill effects of a short training camp from XFL 1.0 and nobody has changed. There’s no reason they can’t have one preseason game, not this half-a$$ed scrimmage no contact that even the NFL thinks is fine nowadays. Essentially the first 2-3 weeks of the UFL season look like the worst preseason game you’ve ever seen. Unfortunately this is the time when the most eyeballs are centered on your product. C’mon Fox and Red Bird, you’re better than this.
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Finally a good game and record crowd on hand in Michigan.
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Today’s games the best of the UFL season so far, from an entertainment perspective.
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St. Louis picked to host the championship game for the second time in as many years
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Not a lot of other good options on where you are going to hold the game.
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A 3% increase.
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So are these numbers the death knell of the league? A couple of thoughts - It would be interesting to see how much money they are losing compared to what they lost on the WWE last year.
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Depends on if they are okay with CFL numbers or not in a much bigger market.
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I don’t think that the UFL was ever designed to be a cash cow—it’s a strategic hedge for the NFL. As @Paolo_X has been saying - college football evolving into a chaotic, semi-professional superleague dominated by the SEC and Big Ten, the NFL is quietly building its own development ecosystem through the UFL. I really don’t think that this is about ratings or merch; it’s about controlling player development, especially for positions like offensive line where the NCAA pipeline is failing.
Fox and RedBird Capital provide the storefront, but the NFL is the shadow backer, ensuring the league survives even if it bleeds $30–50 million a year—a drop in the bucket compared to NFL revenues. Meanwhile, media partners like Fox and ESPN get cheap, reliable live football to fill slots left by skyrocketing rights deals in other sports.
Before you guys go nuclear on me - let’s take a look at the Arizona Fall League which has been around since 1992 and has never been a money maker—that was never the point. It exists to give MLB prospects reps in a controlled, developmental environment, and the league quietly absorbs the costs because the real value is in the long-term talent pipeline, not the gate receipts. Same story with the NBA’s G League. That thing was a freaking joke - It took nearly two decades of slow growth, financial losses, and limited exposure before it became a true extension of NBA operations. Now? 50% of players have time in the G-League - It’s baked into the system—every team has an affiliate, players move up and down like clockwork, and it’s a core part of talent development. That’s exactly the kind of long game the NFL is playing with the UFL. Not a flashy profit generator—an investment in infrastructure for when things go sideways with the NCAA Superleague.
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I hope this is the case, every other country has junior and senior feeder systems into their major sports except for the US who is overly reliant on the NCAA
Look at Canadian lacrosse (which doesn’t receive or make lots of revenue) you have regional bodies like bcla and ola who govern several tiers of jr and sr lacrosse. 99% of NLL players were in these leagues and the ones who weren’t quite ready have the ALL (NLLs in season development partner league or the summer sr a leagues)
The ncaa can be top dog for some jr sports (and not for others like hockey) but there is a critical sr development area that doesn’t exist.
The CFL could have filled this void ( and we do see successful player development and promotion into the NFL) but it has two minor hurdles 1, different rules and 2, foreign country
This is kind of similar to lacrosse where the outdoor version is more popular in the us and a ncaa sport and the indoor version is more popular in canada. For lacrosse Pro players can develop in both disciplines and be successful in both indoor and outdoor professional lacrosse leagues, but the best players tend to be Canadian indoor players due to the competitive Junior league structure and the rules of the game itself are harder (making more competitive players)
Similar to football, where the NCAA is more competitive than CJFL or Usports and the rules of the American game are harder due to field size and other rules. So players can be great in both as we’ve seen, but the best players tend to be Americans from the American structure just like lacrosse with Canadians
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As I watched that huge fart of a game on Friday night on Fox, I too was reminded of the XFL 1.0 and how bad its product was overall and with each successive week.
I’m happy to hear that the rest of the games this weekend were better, including amazingly especially the numbers on Sunday opposite the Masters on CBS, which I was watching.
I suspect that many were watching both events and other sports on Sunday too.
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This is such a great and helpful table, so thank you again.
Well one trend we can see here in TV ratings here in the second season, after setting aside the novelty effect for a ratings boost of the debut weekend of each of the leagues from 2022 through 2024,
is that the UFL 4.0 is now pulling numbers like …
the USFL and XFL in the second and third games of their 2023 seasons.
Ooof, I think the hopes after all that trouble to merge the leagues were much higher, but hey, “they certainly cut costs by” perhaps at least 40% for similar TV ratings at the very least?
These results for Weeks 2 and 3 are after all backers had invested more into the leagues after the last stage-pandemic and post-pandemic ice was broken from 2022 to 2023.
Now given those TV numbers against even the Masters on Sunday, will there be more of these higher numbers on Sundays going forward?
I have already expressed that the Sunday late afternoon and early evening time slot is a bad one, as opposed to midday and night, buy hey in Week 2 with the NASCAR lead-in, we had that smashing 516K number on lowly FS1 on 6 April, which via all things considered was despite heavily limited distribution of FS1.
Apples-to-apples, in my opinion those numbers on wee FS1 were superior to the performance of the early Sunday game on ABC in Week 3 yet comparable to the later game on Sunday on ABC.
In Week 4 on Sunday at 5PM ET on Fox, well it should be most telling on Easter Sunday with much of the country traveling somewhere at that time.
All games are on free US TV this weekend.
I will be watching that one on Sunday night from work plus likely the game on Saturday night also on Fox in Week 4.
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My inner child every week when I see great tables and charts like this one in this thread is kind of like this guy, who is now a meme legend:
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Memphis has a good geographic location going for it, as well as some solid multinational corporate patrons and their employees for a potential market and sponsorship, but nope, it’s NOT a pro football market and is barely a pro sports market at all with the NBA’s Grizzlies, themselves a relocated team in 2001.
Enough already. For 2026, it’s high time for the UFL to move these Memphis Showboats somewhere else. “Where?” will be at hand for the off-season debate.
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Another week and another ratings discrepancy. Me thinks Mike Mitchell is posting the overnight ratings, and not the finals which are tabulated after the top 50 metered markets are counted for. This is showing 840k viewers and a .17 demo, highest of the season for Fox.
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Well then this means …
DUN DUN DUNNNN…
we now have an investigation,
and Mike Mitchell should be punished not proportionally but let’s say exponentially cubed for his folly. We might have to vote on those exact numbers.
Now you’ll have to get to the bottom of all that malarkey too.
We can tolerate many things here including some BS, but malarkey sure is not one of them. Superb Owl just Hooted me that he concurs, damnit.
That’s a decent number on Fox for a huge fart of a game and especially with those shirtless ugly dudes in that front row, which is I hope a trend that does not take off and well for ladies in their place, alas it’s a family show and won’t be allowed you damn Anglospheric prudes too, so there’s no hope there either folks.
We shall see how things go this Friday night, on which I will likely pass unless perhaps it rains, and if Fox is genuinely onto something after an overall subpar and sadass production for Friday night lights.
Back to you, @laxtreme56
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Im pretty sure the answer is no, but do these ratings count online veiwership? For instance i only watch these games on tsn+ but the league is available on multiple streaming platforms. Poorish tv numbers are one thing but online numbers may show a different story
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Indeed over the years, I’ve seldom read a clear answer on this front except for major events, as we did for the Super Bowl and the 4 Nations Tournament in February, for which we were provided clarification for the ratings.
Like you, I rather doubt that the online viewership via TSN+ in Canada and via the Fox website in the US and beyond are included in these numbers.
Also the advertisers for live content remain far more interested in viewing on the big screens more than anything else, for these advertisers for the UFL certainly are either paying more for those ads or they are being made good on a promotion or at no charge as part of their larger campaign on any given network.
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