UFL Cites Growth Over XFL, USFL After First Season

The UFL exceeded its recent spring pro football predecessors, the XFL and USFL, in many key metrics after its inaugural 2024 season.
United Football League/UFL

The United Football League's shareholders and rights owners, FOX, Disney, RedBird Capital Partners, Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia, are excited about the league's future after a 2024 season that showed progress from spring league predecessors.

The UFL released an extensive list of all milestones achieved in Year 1 of the merged entity, from TV viewership and social media engagement to corporate sponsorship support and key on-field metrics.

“With our first championship in the books, the UFL has clearly made its mark in the spring sports calendar with strong viewership across platforms all season long. The high-level, quality football on the field paired with our innovative production and content distribution approach has been a winning combination for football fans,” UFL president and CEO Russ Brandon said in the release.

“The UFL has had consistently high levels of engagement throughout the season, which serves as proof of concept, confirming the undeniable demand for spring football. We appreciate the support we've received from our players, league and team-level employees, partners, and fans. With a robust foundation in place, we are poised to continue our growth trajectory as we look ahead to 2025 and beyond.”

2024 UFL 2024 Season Highlights:

Broadcast Viewership

  • The UFL reached 32 million unique viewers (per Nielsen data)
  • The 2024 UFL season averaged 850K total viewers per game
  • +34% increase over the 2023 XFL/USFL combined season averages (635K)
  • Network broadcasts averaged 945,000 viewers through the championship game, up over 9% against the 2023 XFL/USFL combined season broadcast averages (864K)
  • Cable telecasts averaged 630,000 viewers, up 43% against the 2023 XFL and USFL combined season cable averages (441K)
  • Viewership for UFL Today, ESPN’s weekly digital post-game show was up 20% vs. 2023 across YouTube, Facebook and the ESPN App

Championship Game

  • The UFL Championship game averaged 1,596,000 viewers on FOX
  • Up 23% over last year’s average of 1,298,000 viewers for the respective XFL and USFL Championship games on ABC and NBC
  • Telecast peaked with 1,723,000 viewers from 6:15-6:30 p.m.
  • Best performance for a UFL game on any network.
  • Within the markets of the participating teams, the Championship game delivered a 6.8 rating/19 share and 3.6 rating/15 share in Birmingham and San Antonio, respectively

Viewership Demographic Increases (vs. XFL/USFL combined season average):

  • P2+: +35%
  • Adults 18-49: +36%
  • Female +43%
  • Male +33%
  • Adults 18-34: +36%
  • Female +47%
  • Male +29%

Social Media Engagement

  • 283M views across all social platforms
  • Instagram: 136M
  • Facebook: 51M
  • TikTok: 62M
  • X: 34M
  • Total views for the season beat out total views for the 2022/2023 USFL season and the 2023 XFL season by 100 million+ views
  • UFL content across ESPN social channels was up 34% vs. 2023

Followers

4.13M Total Social Media followers:

  • Instagram: 1.57M
  • X: 857K
  • TikTok: 786K
  • Facebook: 674K
  • Threads: 249K
  • 465K new followers gained since the start of the season
  • YouTube: Tallied 20.3M views and gained 55k subscribers, outperforming the season totals of the 2023 USFL and XFL season

UFL App

  • Launched on March 19, the app now has 106K active users and 7.3M screen views

UFL Website

  • Launched on December 31, 2023, theufl.com has 4M users and 12M screen views

Attendance

  • Over 580K fans attended UFL games.
  • St. Louis set the attendance record for a modern spring football league game with 40,317 at The Dome at America’s Center on April 6

Gameplay Metrics

  • 93.3% kickoff return rate
  • Average starting field position is the 36.5-yard line
  • Average of 43.2 points per game
  • Jake Bates' 64-yard field goal set a spring football record and is two yards short of the NFL record of 66 yards by Justin Tucker

UFL to NFL

  • The UFL has quickly become the place for players looking to fulfill their dreams of playing in or returning to the NFL
  • 12 players signed to NFL contracts as of June 26

Innovation

  • UFL’s use of cutting-edge technology is breaking new ground in broadcast and game operations to lead the game into the future

TrU LINE virtual line to gain:

  • Replaced the chain gain with 4K optical cameras that use machine learning to determine the exact measurement for line to gain based off where the ball is spotted
  • Portable 4K cameras that detect the exact location of the ball, relative to the line to gain, whenever referees request a spot via their wireless headsets
  • Elevated coach-to-player communications allowed teams to have up to eight players equipped with a helmet module allowing them to hear the offensive or defensive playcaller
  • Supported full motion live sideline video with Apple IPADs and DVSport Rewind technology allowing coaches and players to make instant in game adjustments
  • Mindfly body armor camera used by UFL officials
  • ActionStreamer helmet cam used by UFL players

You can find Mike Mitchell on X @ByMikeMitchell.

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Mike Mitchell

MIKE MITCHELL