The UFL kicked off its spring football season on a busy Easter weekend, going up against the NCAA Tournament and the start of MLB games. Despite the competition, TV numbers from Fox and ESPN suggest that the league’s decision to launch during this time may have been a wise one. The league, a result of a merger between the USFL and XFL, saw solid viewership numbers in Week 1.
The standout game of Week 1 was the matchup between the St. Louis Battlehawks and Michigan Panthers, which drew 1.35 million viewers on Fox. This exceeded the viewership numbers of the USFL last season, with NBC’s highest viewership in Week 1 reaching 974,000 viewers. The UFL’s 1.35 million viewers marked a 56% increase compared to the average viewership of all broadcast TV games for the USFL/XFL last season.
In another game on Saturday, the Birmingham Stallions and Arlington Renegades drew 1.18 million viewers on Fox, outperforming NBC and Fox’s Week 1 games from the previous USFL season. While the UFL’s numbers compared favorably to the USFL, they were lower than the XFL’s debut in Week 1 last year on ABC and ESPN/FX. The XFL, which began just after
