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UPDATE – The USFL Championship game on NBC drew an estimated television audience of just 1.04 million viewers on Saturday night, July 1, 2023. The Birmingham Stallions (10-2) defeated the 5-7 Pittsburgh Maulers 28-12 in Canton, Ohio.
Did you know that the USFL is still playing spring football in early summer?
This Saturday night at 7PM CDT on NBC, the second season of the USFL will come to a quiet conclusion. The defending league champion Birmingham Stallions (9-2) will play the North Division champion Pittsburgh Maulers (5-6) for the 2023 USFL title.
For the second straight year, the USFL finale will be played at Tom Benson Hall-of-Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. The league likes playing their championship game at this neutral site stadium located a stone’s throw from the highly-visited NFL Hall-of-Fame. The folks in Canton did a good job supporting last year’s championship game.
If you were unaware that the USFL’s finale was being played this Saturday night, join the club. I have struggled to maintain my interest in watching the USFL during their second season. The novelty of spring professional football has clearly worn off.
The vast majority of American sports fans have failed to be captivated by the second season of USFL spring football games. Television ratings for the USFL have generally averaged between 500,000 and 1 million viewers each week. The ratings needle for Year #2 of the USFL has not shown an upswing.
After two years of the latest experiments in spring professional football, the proverbial handwriting is on the wall for everyone to see.
After working out the kinks last year in 2022, the USFL had expected Season 2 to bring greater fan engagement (whether television viewers or paying customers in the stadiums). By most every measure, the USFL has failed. The league is owned (100%) by Fox Sports, so we probably won’t learn the extent of this year’s financial losses anytime soon.
On the other hand, the XFL (the other spring football league) lost a reported $60 million in 2023. Though the owners of the XFL want to spin a positive story, losing big money was not something which the XFL owners were happy to report.
XFL co-owner Dany Garcia recently said, “We’re extremely well-capitalized for the long-term. This is our new WWE. The next massive live property.”
Let me translate. “We lost a ton of money! In fact, more than we expected. We hate losing money and need to determine how much more money we can afford to lose next season. Our goal is to be the only spring football league which survives.”
Regardless of the spin, I think there is a greater than 50% chance that we just saw the first and last season of the XFL in 2023. The same goes for the USFL, too. Only time will tell.
As the USFL’s second season quietly ends Saturday night, the harsh reality is that America’s spring football leagues have not developed enough return customers to grow their product.
It is the same reason why so many local restaurants arrive with much fanfare but then quietly close after just a few years. Over time, many people visit to sample their wares but not enough customers keep returning on a regular basis to sustain the business.
Before the USFL returned in 2022 and the XFL (version 3.0) joined the party in 2023, the Alliance of American Football (AAF) hit the field in 2019.
That league went bankrupt after just eight weeks. The AAF suffered from undercapitalization and a lousy television contract.
The USFL and the XFL learned from the AAF’s failure.
The USFL has featured weekly televised games on FOX, NBC, FS1, and USA Network. The XFL cut a deal with the ESPN family of channels including ABC. The television production quality and announce teams for both leagues has been solid.
Alas, both leagues’ weekly television ratings have stagnated between 400,000 and 800,000 home viewers. By contrast, Monday’s NCAA College World Series Game 3 between LSU and Florida on ESPN just attracted a record 3.9 million viewers.
Sports fans are still out there. They want to watch events which are compelling and meaningful.
Spring pro football has been neither. It’s not that they haven’t been trying, though.
The XFL played all of its games in the home stadiums of each of their eight teams. The USFL countered by playing games in four cities within their eight team league. Only the XFL’s St. Louis BattleHawks drew more than 20,000 fans per home game in 2023.
The truth is that spring professional football has not captured enough loyal fans watching from their living rooms on national television or in the stadiums.
So, why hasn’t any league been able to come up with a winning formula?
When the greatest sports promoter of our generation, Vince McMahon, threw in the towel on spring football himself, it was clear sign of trouble.
The long-time chairman of the WWE wrestling business had two separate failed attempts to launch the XFL over the last two decades. Both efforts ended during the first season. McMahon is a smart man who does not like to lose money.
Unlike the WWE, the USFL and XFL games do not appear to have scripted outcomes. The football players are giving it their all. They want to win and, perhaps, have an opportunity to play for an NFL team this fall. The players, while talented, are generally not NFL quality. They are still good enough to make most of the games interesting.
The XFL and USFL have featured a number of innovations (improvements) which have been fun to watch.
For example, the USFL’s overtime features three alternating 2-point conversions. That seems to be quite an improvement from the NFL’s sloth-like extra quarter. The USFL fans are kept engaged by this relatively quick overtime period, while the television product stays within the league’s desired 3-hour window.
The biggest problem with spring football seems to be “football overkill”. Americans love football. Just not year-round.
The game is best played in cool to cold weather. Spring (especially in the South) sees temperatures on the rise into the 80’s and 90’s by May. Whether you are in a stadium or watching at home, football games seem more attractive when cooler weather is upon us.
The spring also brings the start of baseball season, the end of the lengthy basketball and hockey seasons, and a myriad of outdoor opportunities for most people (even mowing the yard). Spring football is generally an afterthought during the second quarter of the year. In most parts of the country, the end of winter brings a burning desire to get outside on weekends rather than park in front of a television set watching semi-pro football.
This Saturday night’s USFL championship game is coming at the start of a relatively long July 4th weekend. The College World Series is now over. There are no major golf championships being contested this weekend, either. The stage is there for the USFL to show America how many football fans really do care about their product.
Just don’t get your hopes up!
Though I expect the USFL championship game will pull more than one million viewers on NBC this Saturday night, there is also a very low probability that viewership will exceed two million. Contrast that to more than 100 million viewers for each February’s NFL Super Bowl telecast.
Spring professional football has not succeeded for a variety of reasons. It won’t anytime soon, either. Until the NFL decides that it would benefit from becoming a partner in the spring football business, spring football is going to continue to lose millions every year.
If you want to keep it around, make it a point to watch the Birmingham Stallions play the Pittsburgh Maulers in the USFL championship game this Saturday night at 7PM Central on NBC.
It just might be the last spring football game you ever see on network television.