This week, UFL co-owner Mike Repole told St. Louis media that he "guarantees" the 2027 season will start earlier than the UFL has kicked off since its inception. In fact, a video of Repole's comments was reposted by the St. Louis Battlehawks official X/Twitter and Instagram accounts, indicating the legitimacy of this proposition.
It's likely Repole wouldn't have made this guarantee without the approval of the two main stakeholders who could block such a change to the calendar: The venues and the network partners. Assuming everything is copacetic on those ends, what could an earlier start to the season look like in practice?
One aspect of the UFL that could be affected is the players that sign into the league as free agents. Training camp would have to begin sometime in early January when the NFL season is still underway. A lot of players who might otherwise sign with the UFL could instead wait out the NFL season to see if they land on a practice squad or sign a futures contract. By starting now, UFL teams have been able to acquire players that finished seasons on practice squads but were not signed to futures contracts. Those players will not be available under this change, at least at the start of training camp.
Another consideration is the weather. The UFL has encountered nasty winter storms the past few years in holding training camp league-wide in Arlington. Starting the season, and thus camp earlier would increase the probability of hazardous training camp conditions. Repole eventually wants each team to hold training camp in their home markets, but no timeline has been set for that to happen. And even when it does, the problem doesn't go away - training camp in Columbus in January, for example, could be particularly treacherous unless the league is able to find a place indoors for the teams work out.
Under the current schedule, late-season games in May and early June can bring heatwaves in places like Birmingham, Orlando, and both Texas cities. They'd be trading that for potentially colder weather in February. Is that a positive trade-off? Would fans rather sit in cold temperatures or hot; snow or rain? There's really know way of knowing until the league moves forward with the change and observes the comparison in ticket sales.
The most important decision, however, is when to actually start the regular season. Spring football leagues like the XFL and AAF began their seasons the week after the Super Bowl to take advantage of the football withdrawal fans start to feel around that time.
In the video, Repole indicated a desire to start even earlier than that, perhaps during the bye week between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl (his actual suggestion was two games that weekend and two games "after the Super Bowl," though it's unclear the specific time frame he was looking at for that). Being able to piggyback off of the Super Bowl hype may allow the UFL to get more eyeballs on the product than usual. For those in the habit of sitting down and watching football on the weekends, this would also scratch that itch.
If the decision is made to start that weekend, then the league would have to decide what to do the weekend of the Super Bowl. They could play on Friday and Saturday and avoid Sunday; they could also play on Sunday prior to the Super Bowl, which would also probably get them a substantial amount of viewers who are already watching pre-game festitivities. A Monday night game (or two) would take advantage of the adrenaline still pumping through the football junkie from the night before.
The problem with playing on Super Bowl weekend comes when the UFL's television partners, ABC and FOX, host the Super Bowl. Those networks are unlikely to set aside the all-day hype for that game to make room for the UFL. You'd end up being kicked to ESPN 2 or FS1 (if they aren't showing some type of pre-game themselves), which may defeat the purpose of getting as many viewers as possible that day to check out the UFL.
The difficulty also comes with league expansion. The more teams you have, the more TV windows you'll need to air games, and that space is very limited on these busy weekends. There are ways the UFL and networks could get creative as they have this year by airing games on other days of the week, but they'd need venues to be on board with that plan as well.
There's also the issue of how the NFL would feel about all of this. The two leagues have a limited partnership and a cordial working arrangement. Would the Shield approve of the UFL starting their season during its most important time of the year, siphoning hours away from NFL TV partners for the league's kickoff weekend? The NFL doesn't seem like a league that enjoys sharing the spotlight with others; one wonders if this is something the UFL would run by the NFL or if they would just go ahead and do it regardless.
Starting the week after the Super Bowl would avoid any bad feelings from the NFL but would also limit the number of casual fans likely to check out the UFL product. Though there were other issues at play, starting the week after the Super Bowl in 2023 did not provide the XFL any significant increases in attendance or TV ratings versus what would be expected.
The change to the league calendar on its way in 2027 should not be a surprise to UFL fans who have been paying attention - the league has been publicly open about considering this change since before Repole came on board. Whatever start time the UFL decides, the priority should be on maximizing eyeballs on the product both in attendance live and watching on TV. Thus far, the belief seems to be that the best time for this may be prior to the end of the NFL's playoff season. As long as the UFL's stakeholders are on board, this is likely to be the plan in next year and, if it works, beyond.