Can Spring Football Ever Succeed?

It’s a commonly held belief that America is in love with football. And it’s not just the NFL; it can be argued that the country’s second favorite sport is college football. While the NFL frequently gets between 20-30 million viewers for its games, elite college football programs often get between 5-10 million viewers per week. By almost any measurement of this data, it would be fair to conclude that football will always draw the attention of American audiences.

This logic has been the foundational principle of every spring-time football league that has launched since the original incarnation of the USFL in the 80s. Based on the football watching behavior of the public since then, it’s a fair calculation to make. People love watching college football and the NFL in the fall and winter, so why wouldn’t they want to watch it in the spring as well?

Behind this founding principle lay the remains of countless leagues—from the multiple iterations of the USFL and XFL to more obscure entries like the Alliance of American Football. The UFL (which was the merger of the revitalized USFL and XFL) was supposed to be different. In some sense, it has succeeded as a feeder league to the NFL, but it has also lacked stability. With reports that half of its teams will be relocating next season, it seems that the American public is incapable of embracing spring football.

The Dream of the Football Ecosystem

The path to playing professional football has evolved over the years. For many years, it was NFL or bust for many college players. Unlike basketball or baseball, which have multiple viable international leagues available, football had the NFL as the only true constant. There have been brief moments when a variety of Arena Football leagues rose to prominence, but otherwise it was the NFL or nothing.

When the revitalized USFL and XFL merged to form the UFL in 2024 with the backing of FOX it seemed that there would finally be a pipeline of sorts in professional football. With the addition of Arena Football One (AF1), there seemed to be a path in place for aspiring players to work their way up to the NFL. And that vision has been in motion this past year to great success.

A few arena players had success in AF1 this season and were signed by UFL teams including rookie of the year QB Jalen Morton. The UFL has proven to be a pipeline for NFL depth with over 30 players signing with NFL clubs that played in the UFL this season. This sort of upward momentum validated a tiered system in American football; much how American soccer has seen with talent going from USL to MLS.

That path has positioned the UFL as a viable route to making an NFL roster, keeping the dream alive for players that were not drafted after finishing playing collegiately. The league has a national footprint with games broadcast on both ESPN and FOX, allowing star players to be recognized by pro scouts. Far from being a competitor to the NFL, it seems that the UFL has settled into the lane of being the NFL’s developmental arm—even if they are not owned and operated by the league.

From that perspective, the existence of the UFL as a league that can feed talent into the NFL is a useful asset in a sport where injuries are incredibly common. Plus, from a storytelling lens, there is a “started from the bottom” angle that always plays well. The only issue is that people are not going to games and not watching them on TV, leading to a conclusion that it’s not that people love football but rather that they love the NFL and big conferences in college football.

Name Brand Recognition

The Super Bowl is the biggest day in the national football calendar, and for good reason. It’s a spectacle and a celebration of the NFL season. For football fans, it’s both a momentous day but also bittersweet because it means the end of watching football.

That’s where the logic of spring football comes from. That widespread sentiment reaches the ears of people with means, and they think that they see an opportunity. Their miscalculation, however, is that when people say that they typically mean missing football from brand names that they are familiar with.

The UFL season starts in late March, which is an ideal time in the sports calendar for it to start all things considered. It’s over a month after the end of the NFL season, during the last stretch of the NBA season before the playoffs arrive, and near the conclusion of March Madness. It operates in the void before the NBA and NHL playoffs and the start of the MLB season. That coupled with a supposed love of watching football should translate into interest for a league like the UFL.

And yet, this past season the league saw a huge hit to both its TV ratings and live game attendance. TV ratings were down 26% despite still being broadcast on FOX and ESPN. Attendance for games was even worse, reaching two-year lows in week 7, averaging a meager 7,000 fans per game. This was a steep drop from the former XFL which had over 14,000 per game two years ago.

Part of this dip is in scheduling. For instance, scheduling home games in markets like Memphis and Birmingham early in the day and on Mother’s Day is not the best way to get fans in the stadium. Even when attendance was positive, stadium negotiations became a sticking point. This was the case with the Michigan Panthers, who will be relocated following a UFL Championship Game berth this past season. The Panthers had attendance growth but the cost of playing games at Ford Field was a sticking point that likely led to a relocation decision.

Unlike other leagues, it can be argued that the NFL enjoys a fan base that has fierce dedication to the league itself over teams and players. Many football fans will simply not tolerate negativity about the league because they cherish their Sundays in the fall so much. Whereas the NBA, NHL, MLB, and others are frequently berated and analyzed for every decision. The NFL, more than any other entity, has marketed itself extremely well and created a bulletproof reputation amongst its fans.

Spring football leagues don’t have that, so patience is often in very short supply. The NFL was founded in 1920, but it didn’t achieve profitability until the playoff system was implemented in 1933 and did not enter the next stratosphere of revenue until the advent of televising games in the 1950s. Leagues today don’t have the luxury to sustain for a decade or two until the finances catch up. There are so many decisions made after a couple of years, and so often these leagues compare themselves to the NFL and are flummoxed as to why their league isn’t catching on.

The dilemma with spring football is that it remains an incredibly viable way to expand the reach of professional football to so many talents that may be overlooked by the league. But when no one is watching, it’s hard to keep the lights on. Perhaps the best solution is for the NFL to have a co-branded spring league that is positioned as a developmental arm—like what the NBA does with its G League. As the UFL enters a pivotal third season with a lot of movement and uncertainty, it is becoming increasingly clear that people love the brands of the NFL, Big Ten, and SEC football more than they love the sport of football as a general idea.

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