UFL games across Fox, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and FS1 averaged 816,000 viewers this seasonChris Day/The Commercial Appeal/USA TODAY NETWORK
UFL regular-season viewership in 2024 was well above prior spring football efforts in recent years, a byproduct of much-better windows and a single league following the merger of the USFL and XFL.
Games across Fox, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and FS1 averaged 816,000 viewers this season (ESPN and FS1 had only one game apiece, with broadcast TV getting a wide swath of windows).
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Last year, when there were two spring leagues, the USFL averaged 601,000 viewers across NBC, Fox, FS1 and USA Network (with a large chunk of games on FS1 and USA). The XFL in 2023 averaged 622,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and FX (only a handful of games were broadcast TV).
But this year topped what the USFL did when it was the only spring league back in 2022. That year, games across NBC, Fox, FS1 and USA averaged 715,000 viewers.
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Where the UFL fell short was in comparison to the COVID-shortened return of the XFL in 2020. Through five weeks of games across ABC, Fox, ESPN and FS1, the XFL in 2020 was averaging 1.9 million viewers before the league shut down to the coronavirus.
The UFL’s best audience this season was St. Louis Battlehawks-Michigan Panthers in Week 1 on ABC, with that game in late March drawing 1.35 million viewers.
The UFL had six games top 1 million viewers during the regular season (all on broadcast TV). The top XFL audience in 2023 was 1.55 million on ABC (also Week 1 for Vegas Vipers-Arlington Renegades in mid-February).
The USFL drew a top audience of 2.1 million viewers in 2023 for Memphis Showboats-Michigan Panthers, piggybacking off the Kentucky Derby on NBC in primetime.
