The United Football League (UFL) is a professional American football spring league in the United States. The league was created following the merger of the XFL and United States Football League (USFL); it started play in March 2024. It comprises eight teams in a mix of major sports media markets and mid-sized cities not served by major pro sports (such as those that currently or recently have hosted Class AAA minor league baseball); three of the teams are former XFL franchises, while the other five are expansion teams established beginning in the 2026 and 2027 seasons (the remaining USFL teams were eliminated following that season) under the ownership of Mike Repole.
Background
2020–2021
In 2017, Vince McMahon, who had previously launched the XFL in 2001 as a partnership with NBC Sports, registered a trademark for the United Football League name. An unrelated United Football League, founded by Bill Hambrecht, had played four abbreviated seasons from 2009 to 2012. McMahon ultimately did not use the UFL trademark, as response to the ESPN Films 30 for 30 documentary "This Was the XFL" in 2017 showed that the XFL brand was still viable, and in February 2020, McMahon relaunched the XFL with a similar business structure (though, unlike the 2001 XFL, operated as a sole proprietorship of McMahon's separate from his professional wrestling corporation, WWE) and an emphasis on speed and innovation. The XFL, which was largely successful with its attendance and television ratings, was forced to shut down halfway through its 2020 season in March due to stay-at-home orders imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and declared bankruptcy in April. Later that year, McMahon sold the league to a consortium led by businesswoman Dany Garcia, Garcia's ex-husband and former WWE wrestler Dwayne Johnson (also known as "The Rock"), and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners. The XFL chose not to play a 2021 season (most gathering restrictions would not be lifted until spring of that year) and cancelled the 2022 season after partnership discussions with the Canadian Football League collapsed without any agreement in fall 2021.
While the XFL was on hiatus, Fox Sports, which had been one of the XFL's broadcast partners along with ESPN in 2020, entered a partnership with Brian Woods, who had been operating The Spring League (TSL) as a non-paying, pay-to-play developmental showcase for professional players under a single-campus bubble format since 2017. The XFL had funded The Spring League's 2019 season to test rule changes and were holding discussions about a potential affiliation between the two leagues before the bankruptcy. Fox aired the autumn 2020 and spring 2021 seasons of The Spring League.
2022–2023
Following the 2021 season, Woods and Fox announced they had acquired the trademarks of the original 1980s incarnation of the United States Football League and would be launching a reboot of the USFL in spring 2022. The 2022 USFL season, though its eight teams nominally bore the names of eight former USFL franchises including their cities, continued to use the bubble format with all eight teams based in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 2022 season. The playoffs were held in Canton, Ohio. Woods eventually backed out of the USFL after the 2022 season.
The XFL and USFL played separate, partially overlapping seasons in 2023, to roughly similar television viewership numbers. The USFL expanded to four home cities, adding Memphis, Tennessee and Detroit, Michigan, to Birmingham and Canton, with each city hosting two teams, while the XFL moved three of its eight teams to new cities and held all eight teams' practices at a hub in Arlington, Texas.
For the 2023 season, the USFL average viewership in 2023 was down 16% from its debut season to 601,000 and 3% lower than the 2023 XFL season, despite having 28 over-the-air network games compared to eight for the XFL. The championship game also saw a significant decline in viewership from 2022 as the game averaged 1.2 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, and NBC Sports digital platforms. USFL President Daryl Johnston expressed disappointment and anger that the USFL was comparable to the XFL in ratings for the 2023 season, dismissing the XFL as "no competition" to the "far superior" USFL and musing "to be on par with our competition from a ratings standpoint in Year 2, I'm still trying to figure out: How did that happen? (...) they're not even close." The USFL was already seeking additional investors prior to the start of the 2023 season and had hired Allen & Company to assist in the search; Fox lost an unspecified amount of money on the venture in 2023 due to the high startup expenses for a professional football league.
At the same time, the XFL lost nearly $60 million during the season after spending approximately $140 million in expenses over the course of the 2023 season and earning $80 million in gross revenue, including roughly $20 million that came from its broadcast contract with ESPN. Executives with the league and ESPN indicated that they considered the season a success. Like the USFL, the XFL was also seeking additional investors with the assistance of PJT Partners. After the season ended, the XFL made league-wide cuts affecting up to 30 people, including two marketing executives, and shifted other employees to seasonal work.
Both the USFL and XFL believed that the leagues could be independently viable in the long term even if they continued to compete against each other but, by the time of the 2023 USFL championship, they had decided that setting aside the business rivalry and merging the two leagues would be even more financially advantageous.
History XFL–USFL merger
In September 2023, Axios reported that the XFL was in advanced talks with the USFL to merge the leagues prior to the start of their 2024 seasons. On September 28, 2023, the XFL and USFL announced their intent to merge with details surrounding the merger to be announced at a later date. The merger would also require regulatory approval. In October 2023 the XFL filed a trademark application for the name "United Football League". On November 30, 2023, Garcia announced via her Instagram page that the leagues had received regulatory approval for the merger and were finalizing plans for a combined season to begin March 30, 2024.
The merger was formally announced on Fox NFL Sunday on December 31, 2023. The eight surviving teams were announced the following day on College GameDay, along with the alignment; the XFL and USFL will survive as separate conferences.UFL reveals team markets and head coaches for 2024 season press release. Daryl Johnston would note in February that maintaining the XFL and USFL conferences as separate entities was designed to build an on-field rivalry between the two brands and to give the winner of the league's championship "bragging rights". President/CEO Russ Brandon would later say that the league would be looking at expansion shortly, while Defenders defensive coordinator Gregg Williams revealed plans to expand to 12 teams by 2025 and to 16 teams by 2026. In a May 2024 interview, Johnston stated that he did not anticipate any relocations for 2025.
2024 season
The 2024 UFL season began on March 30, 2024, with a matchup between the 2023 XFL champion Arlington Renegades and the 2023 USFL champion Birmingham Stallions. It concluded with the 2024 UFL Championship Game between the Stallions and the San Antonio Brahmas on June 16 in St. Louis.
The UFL exceeded internal expectations for the 2024 season, with Fox Sports executive Eric Shanks commenting that, though the league still lost money, it was "ahead of the expected pace" in terms of achieving self-sustenance. Television viewership rose substantially compared to the previous season as separate leagues, while ticket sales in most cities declined, prompting the league ownership to shift investment toward local ticket sales teams.
2025 season
The 2025 UFL season began on March 28, 2025 and concluded with the 2025 UFL Championship Game on June 14 in St. Louis, where the DC Defenders defeated the Michigan Panthers. In November 2024, the UFL announced it was officially initiating a team expansion process, and was welcoming proposals from potential markets interested in professional spring football.
In an interview with Randy Karraker prior to the 2025 UFL Championship Game, Brandon indicated that the league had reached the point of being a going concern and that players, agents and coaches now had enough confidence in the league that it was not at risk of failure in the short term, effectively guaranteeing a 2026 UFL season. Overall television ratings and attendance went down in most markets (with the exception of the Michigan Panthers, who made substantial gains), which prompted the firings of ticket sales directors and vice presidents of business operations in Arlington, Houston and Birmingham, three of the UFL's most consistently underperforming markets. The decline in television ratings was not enough to cause alarm for league executives, who remained satisfied with the results, but did prompt reconsideration of the league's start date, which followed the USFL model of starting several weeks after the end of the NFL season (whereas the XFL traditionally drafted off the end of the NFL season and began play the weekend after the Super Bowl). Reports circulated that the UFL would also shift the date of the 2025 UFL draft, moving it from July to September to capitalize on roster cuts made by NFL teams after their preseasons conclude, allowing UFL teams to use their draft picks more effectively on players more likely to sign immediately.
2026 season
Responding to a July 23, 2025 report that the entire USFL Conference would be relocated to other cities by early August in time for the 2026 season, the UFL neither confirmed nor denied the "unauthorized speculation". One of the alleged host venues that the report claimed would be hosting a team—Albertsons Stadium in Boise, Idaho—released a statement denying the stadium would host the UFL in 2026 but that it was a possibility for the future. Sources in Lexington, Kentucky, another one of the cities mentioned in the report, also denied that they had heard from anyone in the league about the supposed relocations.
On July 31, 2025, the league announced the addition of another private equity firm, Impact Capital, to the league's ownership group, with its owner Mike Repole serving as the league's new director of business operations; Repole stated that he had purchased a large minority stake in the league. As part of the same announcement, Repole confirmed that one of the league's eight teams would be relocating to Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio and that the league would remain at eight teams for 2026, with two to four teams relocating which had not yet been decided. Birmingham was the first of the four reported teams to be addressed when Repole responded to fans' Save the Stallions campaign by stating it would be given one final chance to increase its ticket sales, aiming for 5,000 season ticket deposits and 15,000 tickets per game. Positive response to the Stallions deposit drive prompted Repole to confirm the team's return for 2026, admitting the move was a test of how the Stallions fan base would respond. In Michigan's case, Repole stated that he was "trying" to keep the team in the state but that his stadium options were undesirable.
On October 3, 2025, the UFL announced that the Michigan Panthers, Memphis Showboats and San Antonio Brahmas would not return for the 2026 season. Repole cited Michigan in particular as a return candidate for 2028 when AlumniFi Field opens. San Antonio's shuttering, which was personally ordered by Repole, was a complete surprise, as the UFL had already renewed the stadium lease for the Alamodome when the team's shuttering was announced.