After 20 games in the UFL 2025 season, the league's TV ratings are well behind the pace of last year's successful first-year campaign after the USFL and XFL combined forces.
UFL 2025 Season TV Ratings Swoon
To date, the United Football League average TV rating across FOX, ABC, ESPN, and a solo broadcast on FS1 is roughly 612,000-- a 25 percent decrease from last year's UFL regular season average of 816,000 viewers per game.
In 2025, the UFL is averaging 802,000 viewers on ABC, 639k on FOX, 489k on ESPN, and netted a 519k average on a solo FS1 broadcast. The numbers are down across the board. The UFL, which had six games cross the 1 million viewer mark in 2024, has yet to cross that threshold this year.
Not only is viewership far behind last year's pace, but it's also teetering toward the cannibalized level the XFL and USFL were at in 2023, when both spring leagues competed against one another on weekends for attention.
During the 2023 regular season, the XFL, whose games were on far fewer over-the-air broadcast network TV stations, averaged 622,000 viewers, while the USFL averaged 601,000. The latter number was boosted heavily by a Michigan Panthers-Memphis Showboats game that averaged 2.063 million viewers on NBC, brought up significantly by a 14 million viewer lead-in from the Kentucky Derby.
Midseason UFL TV Ratings Snapshot
The mid-season snapshot on the UFL 2025 TV ratings paints a murky picture of the league's future and its ability to grow in popularity. Ultimately, it also provides evidence of the novelty of the merger wearing off and potential apathy toward the product from its established audience.
It also illustrates how limited the league's reach can be to general sports audiences. Beyond threats of an ill-conceived player strike or player misconduct in slapping a fan, the UFL has struggled to garner mainstream attention in a crowded sports landscape.
A move to Friday Nights on FOX, competition from March Madness, the NBA and NHL playoffs, and the recent NFL Draft haven't helped the UFL attract new audience members. But it's challenging not to raise concern over the UFL's current viewership totals.
For those who have been invested in the 2025 UFL product. They witnessed arguably the league's best slate of games this past weekend.
The UFL has been boosted by significant improvements in the broadcast quality of games on ESPN/ABC, produced by multi-time Emmy award-winning College Football and NFL producer Bill Bonnell. The league's innovative all-access features have hit the perfect balance and rival any sports league for immersion and technological prowess. In addition, the arrival of Joe Tessitore on play-by-play has increased the quality of UFL telecasts.
The ancient saying, 'Numbers Never Lie,' can present different truths when viewed contextually through different lenses.
Despite some characterizing pro football as a national sport in the United States, the UFL is a young upstart entity with only eight teams that are in the niche category among sports leagues. Despite that disadvantage, spring pro football products have fared well against other established pro sports leagues since the AAF surfaced in 2019.
The UFL's TV viewership is favorable compared to leagues like MLS, rugby, women's soccer, etc. Case in point: This past Saturday night on ESPN, the Battlehawks-Panthers game averaged 615,000 viewers, while MLS on FOX garnered a little over 340,000 viewers simultaneously. Undoubtedly, if the thriller in St. Louis aired in prime time on FOX, the game would have mustered more than 600,000 viewers.
The UFL also competes favorably against leagues like the NHL, which has similar numbers on cable and over-the-air network TV.
Can The UFL Survive Long Enough To Potentially Thrive?
The ultimate question is, does the new lowered UFL ratings floor warrant the league's continuation? Thus far, the reaction inside the league's leadership has been mixed. There are hints of cautious optimism that viewership figures will improve as competition subsides and games increase in importance. But there is skepticism about the property's ability to grow and thrive. Despite an increase in elite sponsors like Verizon, the ultimate aims of luring investors to the league have not proved fruitful.
The hope from multiple sources inside the league and networks is that Week 5's TV ratings performance will be the league's lowest point and not a weekly baseline.
The one advantage of the UFL in maintaining its hold on network TV and prime cable stations is that the networks own and operate it. FOX and Disney are not paying a yearly rights fee for the UFL. They are, however, allowing valuable air time and covering production of the league's games, and in the case of FOX Sports, along with RedBird Capital Partners, Dany Garcia, and to a much lesser extent, the now and again league figurehead Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, covering operational costs for the league.
Heading into the 2025 season, the UFL's leadership group was moving forward with plans to expand the league's team total from eight to ten in 2026. That's still the plan, but plans can change. How the league performs in the second half of the 2025 season will help determine whether growth can be had in 2026 and beyond or if the juice is still worth squeezing. Right now, the league's juice glass looks half empty.