In its inaugural week, the UFL has shown promising viewership numbers that outpaced expectations. The games were televised by Fox and ESPN, drawing solid audiences. According to Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily, the Saturday games on Fox had audiences of over a million viewers. The opening game between Birmingham and Arlington averaged 1.18 million viewers, while the later game between St. Louis and Michigan had 1.35 million viewers. On Sunday, the ESPN-televised games drew 960,000 viewers for D.C. at San Antonio and 703,000 viewers for Memphis at Houston.
Comparatively, the XFL had higher numbers in its opening weekend last year with games exceeding 1.5 million viewers each. However, history has shown that viewership numbers tend to decline as spring football seasons progress. The USFL had lower numbers in its 2023 Week 1, with a high of 974,000 viewers. The key question now is whether the UFL will maintain or increase its viewership numbers in the coming weeks as it continues to compete with other spring football leagues like the XFL and USFL for viewership share.
According to Karp, the high viewership for Week 1 of the UFL represents a 56% increase over the full-season averages of both the XFL and USFL from 2023.
Despite this positive start for Week 1 of UFL’s first season, it remains to be seen whether these initial gains will continue throughout the season as other leagues also kick off their own campaigns.
Overall, while initial success is important in any league’s growth trajectory, maintaining consistent viewership over time will ultimately determine success or failure in this new era of spring football leagues.
Furthermore, it’s worth noting that although UFL experienced higher initial ratings than XFL did during their first weekend last year but still they are behind XFL when it comes to overall average weekly ratings last year where Xfl managed an average weekly rating of around 1.8 million while ufl got an average weekly rating of around 974k only which is less than half as much as xfl’s average ratings.
