The UFL’s spring football coverage kicked off during a busy Easter weekend, competing with the NCAA Tournament and the first full weekend of MLB games. Despite initial concerns about the timing of the league’s start, TV numbers from Fox and ESPN suggest that the decision was justified.
The UFL, resulting from a merger between the USFL and XFL, had a successful Week 1 with the top game being the St. Louis Battlehawks-Michigan Panthers matchup on Fox, which attracted 1.35 million viewers on Saturday afternoon. Compared to the USFL’s numbers from the previous season, the UFL’s viewership was higher. Last year, NBC saw a high of 974,000 viewers in Week 1 for a Sunday game. The 1.35 million viewers for the UFL is also a 56% increase from the average viewership of all broadcast TV games for the USFL/XFL last season.
Fox’s earlier window on Saturday afternoon drew 1.18 million viewers for the Birmingham Stallions-Arlington Renegades game, surpassing the numbers from NBC and Fox in
