In the second season of the UFL, the TV and attendance numbers were down. The UFL still sees the glass as half full.
Via Jacob Camenker of USA Today, via Sports Business Journal, UFL president Russ Brandon downplayed viewership concerns in advance of the 2025 championship game.
Brandon said the league “isn’t worried at all about the ratings decline.”
“People would give their eyeteeth for the amount of eyeballs that are watching our games on TV,” Brandon said.
The attendance issue is a separate concern. St. Louis is performing incredibly well, even though the numbers were down for 2025. Elsewhere, it’s a struggle.
In Memphis, attendance was down by more than 42 percent. Michigan surprisingly had a jump of more than 30 percent — but to a total of only 11,681 fans per game.
The TV numbers for Saturday night’s championship game between D.C. and Michigan have not yet been released. Last year, the title game averaged 1.57 million viewers.
The in-person attendance for the game are another red flag. Held both years in St. Louis, the audience dropped from 27,396 to 14,559.
Although the UFL has played only two seasons, the USFL played two years before merging with the XFL to create the UFL. As spring football goes, a four-year run is rare — if not unprecedented.
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