The TV ratings are in for Week 3 of the 2025 UFL season. The second year of the XFL-USFL merged league opened to modest viewership numbers in its opening week. Week 1’s average across four UFL games was 559,000 viewers. Week 2’s UFL ratings average was 602,500 viewers. Would the league see more improvement with three of its four games on major broadcast network television?
UFL 2025 Week 3 TV Ratings (Average Viewership)
Friday, April 11
- Arlington Renegades vs. Birmingham Stallions – 8 p.m. ET (FOX): 682,000 viewers (0.17 18-49 demo rating) The peak viewership for Friday night’s game was 856k between the 8:15 and 8:30 pm ET window.
- Saturday, April 12
- Houston Roughnecks vs. Memphis Showboats – 2:30 p.m. ET (ESPN): 295,000 viewers
- Sunday, April 13
- San Antonio Brahmas vs. Michigan Panthers – noon ET (ABC): 719,000 viewers
- DC Defenders vs. St. Louis Battlehawks – 3 p.m. ET (ABC): 967,000 viewers
Sunday’s Week 3 UFL finale on ABC between the Battlehawks and Defenders saw a peak viewership of 1.4 million viewers. The 967,000 average makes it the most watched UFL game of the early season.
The overall ratings average for Week 3 in the UFL is 665K, which is up from last weekend, but the number is bogged down by the 295k showing on Cable. It’s worth noting that TNT’s Sunday NHL doubleheader averaged 183,000 viewers.
The UFL broadcast network average in week 3 was 789k, that’s more along the lines of what modern day spring pro football leagues typically achieve in premium broadcasting windows. In 2024, the UFL, including the league’s championship game averaged 945,000 viewers on FOX and ABC, with six games crossing the one million viewer mark.
Sunday’s ABC UFL game had some stiff competition. The Clippers-Warriors NBA regular season finale averaged 1.55 million viewers on ESPN. In an earlier window, the Pistons and Bucks on ESPN averaged 797,000 viewers. The true mastery of sports audiences this past weekend came from the Masters on CBS, which hit a seven year high with nearly 13 million viewers.
The UFL has all four of their games in Week 4 on broadcast network television, with FOX airing three. However the games will be airing during Easter weekend, against formidable competition in the NBA/NHL playoffs, and WrestleMania on Saturday and Sunday.
The UFL has some ground to gain in matching what they accomplished last season, where the league outpaced the XFL and USFL ratings performances in 2023. After three weeks in 2024, the UFL average viewership was 911,583. The 2025 UFL is roughly 610,000 viewers. However, the increase in ABC and FOX telecasts should help increase that number as it has the last two weeks.
UFL Week 4 Schedule
- Memphis Showboats vs. Michigan Panthers: Friday, April 18 at 8:00 PM ET, on FOX.
- St. Louis Battlehawks vs. Arlington Renegades: Saturday, April 19 at 12:30 PM ET, on ABC.
- Birmingham Stallions vs. Houston Roughnecks: Saturday, April 19 at 7:00 PM ET, on FOX.
- San Antonio Brahmas vs. DC Defenders: Sunday, April 20 at 5:00 PM ET, on FOX.
2 Comments
by 4th&long
Sunday ABC wasn’t awful and closer in line to 2024.
The SA at Mich game also suffered as paid programming (church show) was on in both cities in the 1st hour. This is from multiple posts on Reddit’s league subchannel. Definitely lost some viewers there. Also Palm Sunday church time. Next year you’d like to see them take this into consideration esp since its CST 11am start.
Fortunately the 3pm game survived thru the Masters.
As under performing FOX has been its ESPN thats most worrying. At least FOX is trying a new night. ESPN this week was less than half its 2024 average and overall quite down.
On the bright side… up again and broadcast had a solid if not great week.
Is Fox Easter w/e strategy a good one? It work well last yr. Take (UFL opening w/e 3/31), 2023 (XFL 4/9 w/e), (USFL 4/17 w/e) all three did well Easter w/e. Let’s hope the trend continues!
by Ken Granito
Some things are quickly becoming quite clear.
Friday night being date night is a time to hang with your significant other or go out or whatever, but not everyone is engaged with watching the UFL brand of football on a Friday night. Maybe that is better than what the rest of Friday night programming.
Fans are interested in football, not BS. Everyone was so upset about FS1 even being on the docket, but they brought home 516,000 viewers when a good game was on. Roughnecks vs Memphis got 295,000 on ESPN. Please understand, this is about football first. Kicked extra points second.
Fans enjoy watching football in traditional football times. Weekend days have consistently done the best. I think this should be clear to those schedule setting going for next year.
Being that the peak audience viewing often seems to be the earliest part of the UFL. This tells me some people are giving it a quick view, but they are turning off the sets so you have to think about what you are doing or not doing that is making viewers to turn off their sets.
1. Quarterback play. You need to get better QBs. Maybe you need to have one player per team that gets $100,000 and maybe another that gets $75,000 just a thought with the rest getting the minimum plus a bonus for each year that have been with the league. Bring back AJ McCarron if you can figure that out. You NEED good quarterback play and he is the one guy I have seen play like a NFL quarterback.
2. Provide an option for kicking the extra point. I am so tired of seeing 6s. I thought it would be great strategically to see how it would all play out. It hasn’t worked out that way. This, instead, is ridiculously alienating football fans from the UFL. Most people won’t say it because once they see that they don’t even feel it is worth ever bringing up and people won’t easily share that they wasted their time watching the game.
3. I think getting away from reporters interviewers coaches and back up quarterbacks the play calling was a good move this year. It was awful and its worst showing was when they were on the field and EJ Perry figuratively told them get off the field. I saw in the Panthers vs Brahmas game they went up to Frank Ginda going over a play that led to a sack or a turnover. That is a good thing to go over. That is real football, not telling the world, including the other team, that has a TV set in their booth, what the team is going to do. Much better. Viewers will respond to this, because this is football. When you do the stuff you do you are trying to reach out to young fans that really don’t know football. They will grow tired of it too. My girlfriend said to me. Wow that was stupid they got on the sideline and bothered that backup quarterback just to tell us it was a run left. By the way it gained 0 zero yards. I told her that I didn’t know she was going to pick up on that, but I agree. So much better when they show how a big play came about or a trend that is happening in multiple plays giving show one team is starting to get the better of the other.
3. Announcers still need to be separate from the league, one of the problems with the current set up. Announcers who won’t say, “was that helmet to helmet?” ” Let’s see that play again.” Overall there is a feel that needs to come about. Some of the NFL people are terrible too, but the ABC/ESPN guys are ridiculous. I read recently where an article said that an announcer correctly pointed something out. That is bad when you need to point out the one thing they got right.
All I know is I hope the league delivers in a way that deserves all of our fandom. There will always be mis-steps along the way, but I have concerns, because on many of the main stuff we have gone backwards. It’s like we are failing on the wrong stuff. I have seen adjustments though on some of this stuff so I remain hopeful. Just one last thing. You say you want to be a YOUNG league, but one problem with that, especially at quarterback. 815,000 tune in when the game begins, then 150,000 leave. Let’s keep that in mind when we say, oh we don’t need that person.