urbanSTL

Seattle was a no brainer.  They barely lagged us in attendance.  The current UFL league felt dominated by Middle America except for DC.  DC also had strong attendance.  Vegas had TERRIBLE attendance.   I wonder if we looked at attendance for some of the other football leagues - Arena, etc to see which of them were drawing larger attendances.  

dweebe wrote: ↑

Jun 20, 2024

STLEnginerd wrote: ↑

Jun 20, 2024

dweebe wrote: ↑

Jun 20, 2024

The UFL needs to 

• get Seattle back as their XFL franchise drew solid support and crowds. 
• be back in Southern California for their TV market. LA and/or San Diego
• at least one team in Florida
• try for New York City, New England and/or Buffalo

i agree with the first three.  Seattle, Sandiego, Portlland and, Oakland all are viable markets.  In Florida its gotta be Orlando.  New England is tough though.  All the major population centers have teams.  Including cities like pittsburgh, buffalo and baltimore.  If you can't make NYC work then what hope do you have in a smaller market.

As far as Mexico.  NFL isn't there until they are.  As soon as they decide to go there, you are crushed.  If the NFL can't make Mexico City work then you have to wonder how anyone could make it work.

The New York UFL got hamstrung by playing at the Meadowlands which isn't fun to drive to. And IIRC wasn't public transport accessible on their game days outside of one bus line.

The XFL need to get in to the MLS stadium in Newark or survive long enough to get into the new stadium being built in Queens.

Or just wait until the stadium in queens is built.  I'll agree that NYC might support a team if it was accessible by train.  That's if they are willing to host an American football team in their new stadium.

UFL’s first season provides a building block

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/A ... son-review

“This coming offseason, there could be some venue changes within markets, but the 2025 season will include the same eight cities and teams that played this year.”

“Cost containment also will remain a priority, but the UFL will invest in local sales teams in each market, pushing season tickets, group and premium products with continued help from the league-level ticketing division, led by Senior Vice President Jason Gonella. The UFL’s long-term goal is to solicit local investors in an MLS-style owner-operator arrangement, which compels the league to aim to be a robust local event business as well as a good TV draw.”

The power of TV in sports has always worried me.  The huge dollars involved are making live attendance at games less important than TV ratings and the associated revenue.  Fans seem to take a back seat due to the dollars involved.  We've all watched as the NHL has spread games across multiple broadcast partners making it difficult or impossible to watch every game.  Same with baseball.  Start times for games are manipulated to suit the broadcast partners, fans be damned.  Ticket costs to attend games continue to escalate and you wonder where the breaking point is.  What used to be a family outing has become accessible only for the very well-to-do or corporate interests.  If the current path continues, I could very much see a cliff ahead.  The younger generation has many other interests which capture their attention.  As older fans pass on, are younger fans replacing them?  The massive Boomer generation provided a huge spike which will not be replicated.  Fewer people in succeeding generations alone will lower both attendance and broadcast ratings.  As the pandemic raged on and we watched our favorite teams play in empty stadiums, I pondered then if we were seeing the future.  A time when games would be staged primarily for TV audiences.  Cardinals games show a large percentage of seats unoccupied in season ticket holder sections.  Fans seeming to prefer watching at home on their 70" screens in air conditioned comfort.  While StL has always supported our teams with great live attendance, you do see cracks forming both here and elsewhere.           

I think they also have to thread the needle as it relates to College Football in some respects as well.  St Louis fits the bill of a fair size metro area with no NFL and the big college SEC/Big Ten schools are down the road.   

Dumb funded why they couldn't get to 10 or 12 teams for this league.   I think you could add San Diego as noted above as well as Sacramento for California alone.   Sac area is big enough on top of being close enough to -7 million people.  On top of it, Northern Cali doesn't have any real college powerhouse teams.       

Putting this here because I don’t want to start a new thread.

Arena bowl was held in a mall last night. Might be good we missed out on this league. Guess chesterfield mall wasn’t available .

https://www.stltoday.com/sports/profess ... e3eff.html

UFL Championship to be at the Dome again this year.

Great news for this year. I’m getting pretty worried about the UFL’s long term viability outside of St Louis though.

Yeah they should have left a team in Seattle also put a team in Portland & a few other places that would likely support the league. Memphis & other places look like a disaster. St.Louis is a natural sports city we have no problem supporting an expansion team but that’s not going to happen ever.


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That was a depressing game.  We struggled for first downs and to move the ball.  DC is looking pretty good with wins now over Birmingham and us.  

Spring football leagues have been a bust for as long as they have been a thing. 

The UFL is going to fold. It's just a matter of when.

I liked it better right after the Super Bowl. Still 30k at the dome while 30k were at baseball 9 blocks away. And 22.5 that evening for soccer.


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RockChalkSTL wrote: ↑

Apr 16, 2025

Spring football leagues have been a bust for as long as they have been a thing. 

The UFL is going to fold. It's just a matter of when.

Unfortunately agree. Unless the NFL buys the league or something like that, which seems a long shot.

The least they could do is get out of these huge white elephant stadiums and get into MLS or smaller college football venues.. It looks terrible on tv.

Big shake up at UFL. Relocation of four teams (Michigan, Memphis, Houston, and Birmingham) will be replaced by Louisville/Lexington, Florida (likely Orlando), Columbus, and Boise. Also rumored that Arlington will be renamed. 

Overall, I think this is good news for St. Louis. Closer and better attended games in Louisville and Columbus will create good fan opportunities. 

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 23, 2025

Big shake up at UFL. Relocation of four teams (Michigan, Memphis, Houston, and Birmingham) will be replaced by Louisville/Lexington, Florida (likely Orlando), Columbus, and Boise. Also rumored that Arlington will be renamed. 

Overall, I think this is good news for St. Louis. Closer and better attended games in Louisville and Columbus will create good fan opportunities. 

I personally would have added Seattle Oakland San Diego.

I think Kentucky will be a bust.

Gerry Cardinale said in an interview with NBC last month he'd more or less like the league to become an official development partner of the NFL and the difference between them and the previous failed leagues is they want to work with, not compete. Whether thats just official association with the NFL or a full scale feeder system where NFL teams would have affiliates like MLB, NHL etc. Not surprised where they seem to be going to. I don't know that we will see them in NFL stadiums going forward. Rumor is Ford Field in Detroit was very expensive to rent. Seattle has two soccer teams playing there already through the NFL off-season and that stadium is also hosting the World Cup next year so unless they go to a 70k college stadium I just don't know where that market fits in, not for now at least anyway. I do think they need to have at least one team in California to have a national appeal. Overall though the league needs a major overhaul to survive. More of the same is going to kill it.

I feel like a developmental league for the NFL is where they should be trying to go. But I feel like safety changes would have to be made since football is such an injury prone sport.

A team wouldn't want to draft a QB in the first or second round, send them to their development team, and have them get some major injury because they were playing full contact football.

Doesn't college football already serve as a de facto development league?