UFL executives were extremely pleased with the TV ratings from their just-concluded inaugural season, with numbers topping everyone’s expectations.
Attendance, however, was a different story. There, every franchise but the St. Louis Battlehawks struggled to draw fans.
UFL executive vice president of football operations (and NFL on Fox broadcaster) Daryl Johnston admits the league was “disappointed” in attendance. The former Dallas Cowboys star talked with Fox 4 News in Dallas-Fort Worth about those attendance woes, and he cited several possible factors depressing attendance…including former women’s college basketball star and now WNBA sensation Caitlin Clark.
“Getting people to go to the games this year was a bit of a challenge and I think we need to own a little bit of that because we were late with the merger, we were late with the schedule, there were things that go on,” Johnston said.
“We’re in a very competitive environment when you talk about spring sports — soccer continues to grow in this country, Caitlin Clark is a phenom that kind of swept the spring athletic scene, so there is a lot of different things our there challenging and competing for eyes, so when you talk about ratings it was good, but the attendance is the one we’ve got to get figured out.”
There’s no question Clark has had an immense impact on attendance and TV ratings this year, first as a star at Iowa and now with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever. But for Johnston to imply that UFL attendance suffered in part because some fans opted to stay home and watch Clark on TV seems a stretch.
As far as soccer being a factor, MLS matches draw a fraction of the TV audience the UFL enjoyed in its first season. The spring football league averaged 816,000 viewers across broadcast networks Fox, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and FS1.
While Apple and MLS haven’t shared viewership figures from MLS Season Pass, Fox’s coverage of the April 6 match between LAFC and the LA Galaxy drew just 211,000 viewers.
It’s not easy to build a brand. And Johnston noted that the UFL had little time after the USFL-XFL merger to build promotion and marketing efforts. The UFL averaged 12,828 fans per game in its first season, according to Sports Business Journal.
The league plans to move many games to Friday nights next season, and that could help attendance.
As other spring football leagues before it have discovered, there’s plenty of competition out there for fans. Clark is not going anywhere, and neither are other potential competitors (MLB, NBA, NASCAR, golf, etc.) for would-be UFL fans. But the UFL put together a strong foundation, with its TV success, to build on for the future.
[si.com/fannation]
