Over the weekend, the United Football League concluded the 2024 season with the playoffs starting this weekend. With two weeks left before the official season is over, the UFL broadcasters of FOX and ESPN need to make improvements heading into the 2025 season.
This season, the UFL games were broadcasted on FOX, FS1, ABC, and ESPN. For the most part, FOX did a good job covering the UFL talking about the game stats, recaps, and upcoming games. On the ESPN side of things, well, it was not great.
During the halftime shows, ESPN barely mentioned the UFL except for betting and first-half stats. Instead, they were heavily promoting the college football playoff expansion and other sports programming not named the UFL.
Now, there is nothing wrong with cross-promoting other sports leagues. FOX used sports like NASCAR to help lead viewers into watching the UFL games and did a lot of promoting. They also used the UFL to promote other sports leagues without making the UFL look bad.
However, the way ESPN did it gave off a bad vibe that they did not care about the UFL and it ruffled some feathers among the fans to the point where some took to social media to express their frustration, and rightfully so.
Both FOX and ESPN need to make adjustments to how they broadcast the UFL next season. For example, I would like to see both broadcast companies have an in-studio 30-minute pregame show discussing the upcoming games, news, injuries, highlights, and more. In 2020, the XFL 2.0 had their pregame shows on YouTube with Jonathan Coachman and Charly Arnolt which was great to get all the information before the games took place.
This season, the UFL ratings were better than both the XFL and USFL combined. Pro Football Newsroom’s James Larsen has been covering the ratings all season long. In his latest article from last week, Larsen broke down the Week 9 average views.
He compared the averages of the XFL and USFL from 2023 in which the XFL had an average of 588,000 viewers, while the USFL had 721,000 viewers, and the UFL in Week 9 had an average of 919,000 viewers. One could wonder if both FOX and ESPN had a pregame show would the ratings be higher than they are right now?
With the recent reports that Arlington Renegades quarterback Luis Perez’s potential retirement, it would be cool to see both companies bring in guys who played spring football as game analysts or commentators.
Back in the day, I loved how the original NFL Today on CBS did their pregame shows. They started as a 15-minute show in 1964 and expanded to 30 minutes in 1967. In 1975, the NFL Today had evolved into a half-hour pre-, half-time, and post-game program.
Hearing Brent Musburger saying “You are looking live at …” whatever stadium they showed with Musburger telling the audience what games they are about to see today. That’s what the UFL broadcasters should consider next season. I would love to see both networks show a shot from inside the stadiums as they promote the upcoming games that people are about to see.
During the halftime, both networks did show the highlights of the first half. This time around, in addition to showing the highlights, I would like to see the panel give their insights and analysis on what the teams need to do in the second half. Lastly, I would like to see a 15 to 30-minute postgame show showing the recaps, interviews, and previewing of next week’s games.
Adding a half-hour pre-, half-time, and post-game shows, would make the UFL gameday experience feel important to both networks and therefore might have a chance to grow the league over time and bring in new fans.
