• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 3, 2024

Although still posting modest viewing, professional football games on network television will again make a run for viewers during the spring.

A new league is starting up -- again. The United Football League (UFL) -- a merger of the XFL and USFL to be called the UFL -- is owned by an investment group fronted by actor/producer Dwayne Johnson, a former wannabe football player who didn't quite make it into the college or professional game.

The underlying premise that continues to push these businesses along is competitive, underserved players -- mostly not drafted in the bigger NFL league -- as potential storylines for the marketing of the league. 

Decades-long efforts of competitors looking to compete with the NFL have risen and fallen through over the years in attempts to get a firm footing on network schedules and with viewers.

If that does not tell you something, here's this: In 2023, USFL viewership across all games was down 16% from its debut season to 601,000. It was also 3% lower than the XFL's first season despite having more favorable distribution, according to Sports Business Journal. 

In addition, the USFL Championship game was down 24% to 1.2 million viewers on NBC. By way of comparison, the XFL championship game was not much better that year -- 1.4 million viewers.

So why continue? Because if there is even a glimmer of hope that TV networks can succeed in a burgeoning streaming world -- where viewers can pick and choose what they want, when they want -- it continues to be in the hands of those potential new and existing sports programmers.

Professional football is, of course, the obvious sports choice -- as the NFL continues to dominate TV network airwaves with programming content that regularly delivers around 17 million average viewers a game -- considerably higher than the one or two TV network scripted entertainment series that can post, at best, 9 million to 10 million or so viewers per episode.

Even then, viewers can go to their favorite streamer the next day to view that content.

The NFL itself can only seemingly expand by just so much in its traditional time period of the fall/winter -- although it also attempted through a number of deals to expand in the spring, including  “developmental” leagues. 

It did so briefly with NFL Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s, but closed due to ongoing financial losses of around $30 million. More recently, the NFL reportedly was looking at another project in 2016 and 2017, which then seemingly fizzled out. 

Proponents might say spring scheduled, European-based, or development leagues still have some potential now -- more than years ago -- because of dramatically declining viewership due to cord-cutting. Add in the potential for that live TV viewing commands a premium for TV advertisers.

But the push actually comes from the NFL itself -- which continues to see ratings continuing to inch up higher each year over the past few seasons --  up 10% this season so far to average 17.9 million viewers.

That alone keeps potential football programming upstarts going for the end zone.