TV ratings vs other sports
TV ratings vs NHL 2025-2026:
NHL viewership reg season:
Based on SMW and ESPNPressroom - the regular season for NHL looks very similar to UFL:
"2025-26 NHL regular season averaged 546,000 viewers across ESPN/ABC & TNT Sports"
ABC/ESPN Nets - "ESPN averaged 760K viewers across 54 games on ABC and ESPN. Individually, the NHL on ESPN averaged 602K viewers (38 games) and the NHL on ABC averaged 1.1 million viewers (16 games)"
TNT - "TNT averaged 385,000 for its 72 games"
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UFL reg season viewership (2026): Based on SBL, ESPNpressroom, PI
"games through Week 5 across Fox, ABC, ESPN, FS1 and NFL Network averaging 631,000 viewers
Games across ESPN, ABC and NFL Net are averaging 670,000 viewers; Fox Sports games are averaging 636,000 viewers"
But when we take out NFLN the ABC/ESPN games are avg 795k thru wk 6. ABC alone 964k also thru wk 6. ESPN alone 593k.
So in general UFL reg-season games 631k (thru wk5) beat all NHL full reg-season vs 546k. And NHL got a boost from Olympics per SMW as ratings went up after them.
The more directly comparable ABC/ESPN is almost identical from UFL to NHL. There are various other factors - but it keeps UFL, at least on TV, in the range of a major sport.
The Disney deal with NHL is $400mm a year, TNT $225mm. You can bet that goes up substantial next contract. The UFL's tv valuation, while smaller # of games should be coming closer to what is needed to break even.
Thoughts on TV viewership? and impact on UFL survival?
3 replies
Replies (3)
Viewership is trending the right way but I'd really like to see Fox Friday night break 700k and one of these weekend games in the 800-850k range. FS1 and NFLN are dead weight and should only be used if a game is weather delayed.
We don't know what the Financials look like. Seems teams picked up a lot of local sponsors but also lost some bluechip players in Verizon, Pizza Hut, Salesforce, and Jersey Mike's. I believe 2028 may be the do or die year. We'll have 3 years of data under the Repole regime and see how the 2 new expansion clubs fare. If attendance amd ratings don't improve by 10-12% between now and then, it might be safe to say the spring experiment just won't work.
Looks like the Orl-Bham week 7 matchup drew 895k on Fox. Big #s that haven't been announced anywhere.
https://ustvdb.com/networks/fox/shows/ufl/
LAxtreme - I don't think that's the case. When you look at Programming Insider the 895K is only for 6 minutes from 7:00-7:06pm.
https://programminginsider.com/tracker-and-marshals-on-cbs-are-the-go-to-dramas-on-sunday/
Its just brutal that we can't get official average (for entire show) numbers.
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