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***Correction – The game will be played on Saturday, May 13 at 7PM! My apologies!!!
This Saturday night at 7PM CDT on ABC, the XFL Version 3.0 season will come to an end with its championship game being played in San Antonio. The 10-1 DC Defenders of the North Division will square off against the South Division champion Arlington (Texas) Renegades.
The Renegades come into the finale with a record of just 5-6 after surprising the South Division regular season champion Houston Roughnecks (7-4).
Did I say that Saturday’s XFL championship match-up of DC and Arlington will be played in (wait for it) San Antonio’s Alamodome?
San Antonio’s own XFL team (the Brahmas) drew less than 15,000 fans for the team’s five home games this season. Does the XFL really expect the fine citizens of San Antonio to fill a 50,000 seat football stadium to watch two other XFL franchises duke it out this Saturday night?
If the XFL folds after this year’s third attempt, the phrase “Remember the Alamodome” may be a fitting epitaph.
To recap, the best team in the eight-team XFL (the DC Defenders) will play against the fifth best team in the league (Arlington Renegades) for the championship on Saturday night at a neutral site in San Antonio.
DC finished with a league best record of 9-1. Two other North Division teams (the Seattle Sea Dragons and St. Louis BattleHawks) concluded their regular season at 7-3, while the Las Vegas Vipers finished fourth at 2-8.
Seattle won a tiebreaker for the right to play against DC for the North Division crown. Last weekend in Washington, DC defeated Seattle 37-21. Attendance in Washington was 18,664. It was the largest crowd of the season in DC.
Down in the XFL’s South Division, the only team which finished the year with a winning record was the Houston Roughnecks at 7-3. Arlington was in second place at 4-6. San Antonio (3-7) and Orlando (1-9) brought up the rear of the lowly South Division of the XFL.
Last weekend, Arlington went to Houston in the semifinals and surprised the home Roughnecks 26-11 to advance into the XFL championship game this Saturday. Houston’s home playoff game attendance was just 13,568 at a relatively new football stadium on the University of Houston campus.
Here’s an interesting thought. This Saturday night, there is a 50% chance that the 2023 XFL champion could be the team from Arlington, Texas with a 6-6 final record!
Oops!
How could any professional sports organization allow a team without a winning record to win its league championship??
You haven’t read this yet, but the XFL has lost a ton of money this season. Unlike its competitor in the USFL, the XFL boldly went forth with a plan for all eight franchises to play five home games apiece in their ten game regular season schedule.
The St. Louis BattleHawks were the only successful draw in the XFL this year. The team averaged a little more than 35,000 fans per game to lead the spring football league in home attendance. St. Louis football fans sent a clear message to the NFL that the Rams should not have been moved to Los Angeles at the end of the 2015 season. The city has been in mourning ever since.
If the NFL actually cared about St. Louis, they would never have allowed the Rams to move to the 2nd largest television market.
None of the other seven XFL franchises was able to pull more than 15,000 fans per home game. The second best draw in 2023 was San Antonio with 14,983 per game. The Las Vegas finished with the lowest average home attendance at just 6,028 per game.
With an average ticket price of just $20 for most XFL teams, the weekly revenue generated by ticket sales was not enough to cover the costs of stadium leases and operations at most XFL locations.
Television advertising revenue was being counted on to generate significant cash for the XFL.
Just five of the forty televised XFL regular season games were able to draw more than one million television viewers. Most of the other 35 XFL regular season games (televised on ESPN, ESPN2 or FX) drew an average of about 500,000 TV viewers each.
Check out the television ratings for several other sports events conducted in recent weekends:
NBA playoffs 4.5 million viewers
WWE Friday (Fox) 2.5
Auto Racing – NASCAR 2.2
NHL playoffs (Sunday) 2.2
WWE Monday (USA) 1.8
Auto Racing – Grand Prix 1.5
PGA Golf (New Orleans) 1.47
Major League Baseball (Sun) 1.4
UFC Fight Night (Sat.) 1.2
Women’s Gymnastics (Sat.) 1.02
USFL Week 3 (Sun. – Fox) 0.56
XFL Playoffs (Sun.- ESPN) 0.48
LIV Golf (CW Network) 0.3
Only LIV Golf (which just began its first year of network television) had fewer TV viewers than the XFL and USFL spring football games in the past couple of weeks.
One year ago, the USFL executives stated that a weekly audience of one million or more television viewers would be enough to consider their games a success. Last weekend’s spring football games brought a total of about one million total viewers for both the USFL and XFL.
Ratings matter!
In the case of the USFL, the league agreed to split the television advertising revenues with the networks carrying their games. The TV networks did not want to pay the USFL any financial guarantees for the rights to carry its weekly schedule of games.
Based on the number of previous failed attempts at spring professional football, the USFL had zero leverage. It was in a weak bargaining position if it was trying to find a reputable sports network to carry their weekly games.
I suspect that a very similar issue arose this year with the XFL and its television partners.
The television networks want to make money when airing sporting events. Football games require a battalion of technicians and related personnel to put on the show. Football is a very expensive television production.
In comparison, how many cameras and staff are required to televise a tennis match or a bowling show? What about basketball or hockey? None require the large number of professional staffers and expensive broadcast equipment as a professional football game does.
Football needs strong financial support in order to justify the high costs of operation.
Let’s review what we have learned in the past two years about spring professional football:
- Neither the XFL nor the USFL have built a sustainable weekly television audience of one million or more regular viewers.
- The level of play is better than expected, but it still looks and feels like a minor league game.
- The XFL games have seemed more exciting on television by playing in front of home crowds. However, most of those crowds were not large enough to cover the high costs of playing in those football stadiums.
- The USFL games are a bit less exciting. The league has seen continued low attendance even after playing half of its games in 2023 in front of local fans. However, the USFL has proven to have a much more economic business model.
- The NFL is not currently involved in either league. We now realize that the vast majority of these spring football players will never play a down in the NFL.
- Without a deal to become a developmental league for the NFL, these two spring football leagues are a dead end proposition for the majority of its players. The fans now realize this, too.
A merger of the XFL and USFL is not likely as neither league is making money. However, the USFL is 100% owned by Fox Sports. The USFL should have the better chance to survive as long as the parent company doesn’t mind losing money. Perhaps the losses shown by the USFL serves as a tax write-off for Fox?
The fans of spring football have spoken!
Other than in St. Louis, none of the 15 other teams comprising the XFL and USFL have been well supported in home stadiums or by television viewers at home. It is hard to justify the continued financial losses of either league.
The quality of play on the field has been good enough to whet the appetite of any football fans willing to watch the USFL or XFL. The lack of television viewership and fans willing to buy tickets to watch professional spring football games speaks the truth in 2023.
Despite a really good try by the USFL and XFL, this simply isn’t working.
Our appetite for spring professional football may be like trying to eat another piece of cake once you are already full. Sometimes it is better to digest it for a while and then come back for more a little later.