UFL News Hub can confirm what James Larsen of PFNewsRoom has reported. The UFL Championship game for the 2025 season will take place in St Louis Saturday June 14th. UFL News Hub sources told us this plan a while ago, so much so, I already book my hotel weeks ago.
Back in October we told you that originally the hope was to have the big game at the leagues second best venue in Audio Field. That idea was nixed due to the FIFA Club World Cup. Next in line at the time was Protective Stadium, home of the UFL Champion Birmingham Stallions.
League officials are not to happy with that stadium and with a fan based that has won multiple championships yet can’t fill the stadium. The United Football League looked towards other options.
One idea floated was to have the championship game at the location of one of its new expansion teams. That location was Lumen Field in Seattle. Home to the reportedly returning Seattle Sea Dragons, something we have been reporting.
The problem with Lumen Field is the same problem with Audi Field. The FIFA Club World Cup is also being played at Lumen Field around the same time as the UFL Championship game. This leaves the next best option on the table, The Dome At America’s Center.
Per UFL News Hub’s Mike Mitchell, last years UFL Championship game, without the Battlehawks drew 27,396. The UFL would get no where near that number at Protective Stadium in Birmingham.
Currently Las Vegas Odds has the Battlehawks as the second best team in the UFL. With six homes games this season, due to the schedule issues in San Antonio. St Louis could add two more making it eight total. The team could host a home playoff game and also play in the UFL Championship game.
That is if the team is good this year. They moved on from QB AJ McCarron and lost OC Bruce Gradkowski who is now the offensive assistant for the Detroit Lions. Also, with all these home games, will St Louis burn out on the UFL.
1 Comment
by Ken Granito
I often see eye to eye with the league although there have been times we don’t. I largely feel pretty good about the football purity and to be honest what it represents for the players and the fans. I hope it stays this way as it is the reason I am a fan of the UFL. I can’t knock the UFL for making St. Louis the home of the 2025 Championship game. IF you think about it, it is easier for them to.
1. Outside of a catastrophe, it is safe from the environment.
2. It is in a fairly central location to the UFL fan base, which allows many people to attend the game.
3. The fan base for the St. Louis Battlehawks is the best the UFL has to offer.
4.They just renovated the stadium. Although last season the game was in St. Louis the stadium was not renovated and to be honest look terrible on the screen. Having a game with the upgrades makes all the sense in the world.
5. I remember reading that the stadium rental calls for more beneficial revenue to the UFL with increased attendance. This makes sense as if there are more people at the game, more revenue can be had for the government, local economy, etc, etc. I believe it was reported last year that the UFL made money in St. Louis last year. I don’t know how the extra games translate with that, but if it does, this is an extra incentive.
As you can see there is no way the UFL made the wrong decision to have the game in St. Louis. Seattle is just too far away to make a statement that you want to play the game at Lumen Field. That would’ve been too much, so it’s not like they mad a bad decision.
Having the game in St. Louis makes sense, however, it does bring into question the purity of the game. To me, football among everything else should be fair. It’s not Birmingham’s fault the UFL put a team there. Just as it is not any of the Texas teams’, nor Memphis’. The UFL did that. That is on the league. Basically, St. Louis has a 1 in 4 chance of making the championship game a home game and they have that now 2 years in a row. I mean you may just as well rigging the game by being LeBron James, Dwayne Wade & Chris Bosh changing the NBA landscape by saying Miami is nice in the winter, let’s all go there and win championships. The politics of the NFL is why I choose to follow the UFL. Putting the game in St. Louis again before any other place rings to politics and money. It’s not like there are 32 teams battling it out making it highly unlikely the Battlehawks could make it. The Battlehawks literally have a 1 in 4 chance of making it to the final. The more stadiums you have in play is a better argument for the neutrality of a site. Hopefully the task of playing football with a rookie playcaller and quarterback will make it difficult for the Battlehawks to make it to the playoffs. .
It was stated Audi Field & San Antonio is not an option due to scheduling, but let’s take a look at a couple other options.
BIRMINGHAM: To me this is the fair choice. Based on the St. Louis based points there are plenty of reasons it makes more sense in St. Louis, however, it was in St. Louis last year. Also, I read an article it was going by attendance and since there were problems with San Antonio & DC and St. Louis was already done, Birmingham was the 4th option. Somewhere I heard weather was a cause, but in the same article they mentioned Memphis being a candidate if the stadium renovations were complete. If weather is a problem in one, it’s a problem in the other. So let’s not go there. Additionally, the game will be an evening game allowing for the sun to be down, taking all those sun sapping rays off the table. Maybe it will be a muggy night? It says the hi in June could be expected to be 88 degrees so it’s a little higher in the day, so maybe it’s 80-84 around game time. There are 7 days of rain expected so let’s say there is around 20% rain could be an issue, but not likely. If they want to show off the new digs in St. Louis, well I have watched games in Birmingham at night and it has truly been beautiful. The stadium when lit with a sunset sky is amazing, so that’s not it. So to me it comes down to the optics of it looking empty. It looked empty in St. Louis last year, brutally empty. I think we can do better than 20k in Birmingham for a title game. This stated it wasn’t fair to everyone else in the league when all their games were played in Birmingham, so maybe Birmingham can use a little unfairness. Personally, I am hoping the league does better this year in Birmingham.
EXPANSION GAME SITE: I don’t believe this is the answer. You should have either a neutral site or stadium of one of the teams, but since people felt the league was looking this way. I have heard all the talk of Louisville Kentucky as a possible home to the expansion UFL. Let’s see. It is a pretty central locale to the rest of the league and I heard the UFL TV market is pretty good there, so maybe people would come to see a UFL game there. 1. To prove they deserve a team, plus people can come from any of the other cities. L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium. From St. Louis it is 4 hours. From Michigan 5 1/2 hours. It is 9 hours from DC. 5 hours from Birmingham and 5 1/2 hours from Memphis. It is 16 hours from San Antoinio. Being this is an outdoor stadium with the pretty much the same weather as Birmingham and optics would be similar to Birmingham with a 60K+ stadium it would come down to attendance.
Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium: To me this is my favorite spot. If last years game wasn’t in St. Louis, I would be on board with St. Louis this year, but it was leaving this as my top choice. There is a reason to pick a place that is supposed to be neutral. It’s about the legacy you leave behind as you move forward and the purity of football. Giving a team it’s fair advantage is one thing, but giving a team an unfair advantage is another and giving this game to St. Louis is unfair. I attended the 2022 USFL Championship and Canton was amazing. The weather, the sky and crowd were amazing. You could ask Mark Perry, James Larsen or Stephan Rachuk and they will agree the Championship game was a HUGE success. I did not attend the 2023 version, but I bet it did not have as good an attendance. Part of moving the championship game is keeping it new and keeping it exciting. It being in St. Louis this year faces those same concerns and could be a lag. I think if you went back to Canton this year with the UFL you would have both USFL and XFL fans being excited something the 2023 version did not have going for it. It was only USFL fans, but in 2022 both XFL and USFL fans united as the 2022 version of the USFL had many players from the 2020 XFL and was the only game in town. It would be that way again. Usually the newer instance would be the more true one, but it would not be as both USFL & XFL fans are again on the table. I honestly believe the game being held in Canton would be almost if not a sellout. I understand that would be less tickets than the 27k tickets that were sold last year, but the stadium would be FULL. It would look like what you want a championship game to look like. If it did sell out articles would be written about how the UFL wasn’t prepared for how the league took to take off and although us true fans would know the difference, the common fan would not and just be swept up in “UFL Mania.” Based on a reasonable ticket price, I would buy my tickets in Canton tomorrow, but I don’t think I will be attending the one in St. Louis. I guess I can tour the brewery or look at the Arch, but the Cardinals are on the road so I am not certain what I would do in St. Louis outside the game. In Canton, you have the Football Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame an hour away in Cleveland and some pretty good parks to visit. From DC the drive to Canton is 5 1/2 hours. From Detroit it’s 3 hours. From St. Louis it’s 8 hours and from Birmingham it’s 10. From New Jersey it’s 7 and from Memphis it’s 10 1/2 hours. It’s 5 hours from Louisville and 21 hours from San Antonio, which means likely a flight.
To me, if Birmingham not getting the game has anything to do with the weather, you should just scratch all the south teams that play outdoors, meaning Arlington, Houston, Birmingham and Memphis should already be scratched from future contention as well as Louisville, Kentucky which means if you plan to expand there that site does not provide a good Championship game venue. The conference championship game will only be the week before after all, meaning half the cities are brought in to question if you should have put teams here. This would indicate to me the game can only be held in St. Louis, Detroit Michigan San Antonio or DC. DC’s attendance can only be 20,000 and it is a soccer specific stadium so that might not be perfect. If you put a team in Seattle you would pick up a possibility there for the Championship game, but there would be no other teams in the area to piggyback from, so if Seattle is not in the game you may be facing an attendance problem. I am not saying to avoid Seattle, but, to me, it seems just another reason to put one of the teams in New Jersey or Boston. June evenings tend to be beautiful in New Jersey. In 1985, New Jersey had a monsoon, no lie for the USFL Championship game in July. Even driving to the stadium we did not know if the game was going to be played. This was a game between the Baltimore Stars and Oakland Invaders and we have attendance of 49,623. The Generals were not part of the game. The weather may have knocked that number down at bit, but there was well 35k-42k at the game. I was a seasons ticket holder and it looked like more than the usual game and we consistently drew 32,000 to 40,000. I am not saying I don’t see the reasons, but doing what they are doing is putting all the UFL eggs in the St. Louis basket. If they want to rely on St. Louis being the whole league just keep up the joke. It’s not a funny joke, but one that has clearly started. If the league decides it wants to be more than a one trick pony, it needs to find new, real expansion sites. It just seems to make the best sense to me.
I still feel Canton would be better for 2025, but it’s tough to argue with the reasons that make St. Louis a top consideration even with the back to back seasons. I think it is clear, however to avoid this from happening in the future, you need to start attracting more teams from the North. I still feel the New Jersey Generals are the answer.