Though UFL attendance declined across many returning markets in 2026, the good news is television viewership was on the upswing. Both FOX and ABC/ESPN touted viewership growth year-over-year on those network and broadcast platforms.
All year, I've been keeping track specifically of the UFL's performance on Friday nights on FOX. I've paid special attention to these games for a couple of reasons: One, it's a weekly primetime network TV timeslot for 10 weeks, and while network television doesn't have the same cache that it once did, it's still prime real estate and the numbers will in theory be watched more closely by networks and advertisers than when airing at almost any other time. Two, it's a straight apples-to-apples comparison that can be made from 2025 to 2026. While the UFL airs at various times and stations all season, this is the one, dedicated, place and time that has been afforded the league by one of its ownership groups.
Here are how those UFL viewership numbers compare over the course of the two years:
2025: 612.8k viewers (622.6k including 7-10-minute pre-game), .116 18-49 demo
2026: 631.9k viewers (638.6k including 7-10-minute pre-game), .105 18-49 demo
The Friday night timeslot saw viewership increase about 3% in 2026. Programming Insider, the site where this Nielsen ratings data is posted publicly, reports the game and then separately, the pre-game introduction that takes up the first few minutes until kickoff. If you take the entirety of the 8-11pm EST timeslot, it's an increase of about 2.5%. It's also worth noting that Programming Insider does not appear to include any overrun in the ratings. Therefore, if the game bleeds into the 11:00 hour, those numbers are not reflected in the data. One would imagine that would increase the viewership, as people would be tuning into the late local news as well as wanting to catch the end of a potentially competitive game.
Another note about this is that while overall viewership is up, the key 18-49 demographic is down slightly. Historically, this has been the demographic advertisers look at when investing their dollars in a show, which is one of the main ways networks make money off of television. This number reflects the trend that has been happening for years now with younger people watching less and less network TV overall. So while the UFL was up year-over-year in this timeslot, those games skewed older in 2026 than in 2025.
What's most interesting about these numbers is how little variance there is from week to week. With few exceptions, the UFL drew incredibly consistent numbers, rarely straying more than 40,000 or so from any number. They drew fewer than 600k three times, as compared to four times last year. Week Four was the outlier both years, up against the NBA Playoffs and the NFL Draft. However, in 2026, the decline was not as great. The UFL drew 467k that week in 2025 but was only down to 535k in 2026. That's a big reason the league was able to see an overall increase this year.
In March, I wrote a preview article comparing the UFL in 2025 on Friday nights to college football and college basketball that had come before it during the television season. From 2025 to 2026, college football was down in both total viewers and the key demo, while college basketball was up in both. Notably, college basketball games more than doubled, on average, UFL game viewership in 2026, while college football more than tripled it.
There were eight instances of repeat programming airing on FOX when college basketball and college football did not run games on Friday nights on the network. Those shows averaged over 800k and a .08 in 18-49. The UFL had them beat in the demo but not in overall viewers. The question that FOX has to answer is how long they're willing to give the UFL this timeslot when they can air repeats that cost nothing and approach or even best UFL's numbers.
The UFL desperately needed some good news heading into the 2026 off-season, and they got it with these TV numbers. While they're likely not going to blow anybody out of the water or even convince the doomsayers that the UFL will be in it for the long haul, it's something positive to build on for 2027.