The debut season of the United Football League is entering its fifth week of action, with some franchises now positioning themselves for the playoffs. Odds and lines for UFL betting are now common at online sportsbooks, but how is the league settling in with viewers?
Here, we examine some of the attendance and ratings data for the first four weeks of the 2024 UFL season and give our thoughts on how the league is performing so far.
UFL Attendance Numbers Through Week 4
- Arlington Renegades
- Week 1 – 14,153
- Week 3 – 8,411
- Birmingham Stallions
- Week 3 – 12,265
- Week 4 – 7,262
- DC Defenders
- Week 2 – 15,052
- Houston Roughnecks
- Week 1 – 9,157
- Week 4 – 7,179
- Memphis Showboats
- Week 2 – 8,791
- Michigan Panthers
- Week 1 – 7,957
- Week 2 – 9,444
- Week 3 – 6,952
- St. Louis Battlehawks
- Week 2 – 40,317
- Week 4 – 31,757
- San Antonio Brahmas
- Week 1 – 13,164
- Week 3 – 11,790
- Week 4 – 11,251
The clear high-water mark here is St. Louis. They’ve been football-starved since the NFL’s Rams departed for Los Angeles in 2016, and fans are getting behind the Battlehawks in numbers.
In their prior 1.5 seasons, the Battlehawks garnered similar support, easily topping the XFL’s attendance charts. DC and San Antonio have kept it respectable in 2024, with north of 10,000 crossing the turnstile for each contest so far.
Things get dismal after that. The Michigan Panthers have posted the lowest attendance total up to this point in 2024, with only 6,952 people showing up to their Week 3 win against the Houston Roughnecks.
Michigan has failed to crack 5-figures during its first three home games, and the declining interest in the team does not match its performance. The Panthers are currently 2-2 and in second place in the USFL Conference.
What’s incredibly concerning is the most recent USFL and XFL champions are not drawing crowds to their home games. The Birmingham Stallions are struggling to crack 10K, and the Arlington Renegades suffered a 3,000-fan decline from their first home game to their second.
UFL Television Ratings Through Week 4
All United Football League games are aired on FOX, ABC, ESPN, and FS1. Broadcast ratings for games that air on major networks have been promising, with viewership totaling around 1,000,000.
UFL games aired on FS1 have experienced dismal ratings, drawing fewer than 300,000 viewers on average.
Shifting back to the major networks, current ratings are not that bad considering games are up against the NBA and NHL Playoffs, the tail end of March Madness, and the beginning of the MLB regular season.
It doesn’t help that the UFL Championship Game will be held during the NBA and Stanley Cup Finals. They may have made a mistake by sticking to the USFL schedule, as the XFL began a week after the Super Bowl.
Despite the low totals, these numbers nearly double what the USFL and XFL sustained a year ago. This could be due to the merger of the two leagues, as they are no longer directly competing for spectators.
How long the league sticks around will be determined by how UFL executives view this data. We’re hopeful for another season or two, but that’s not likely if numbers don’t improve.
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