We’re now officially halfway through the inaugural USFL season, and outside of the first week, ratings have been consistent.
This past weekend the league had three of their games broadcast on network television, with the outlier being the Friday night matchup on USA. So far this season they’ve been able to pull in at least a millions viewers to their showcase broadcast, let’s see how they fare at the midway point.
The first game of the weekend saw the Michigan Panthers take on the Tampa Bay Bandits on USA. The league has traditionally pulled in less viewers in their cable showings and this week is no different. The exciting matchup pulled in 250,000 viewers, which is up from last weeks late-Friday game.
The Saturday game between the Breakers and Generals on FOX was a battle of the 3-1 teams, and arguably one of the best games this weekend. So far, FOX has been able to pull in 1M viewers, but this week we see a slight dip down to 735k.
FOX saw a slight uptick for their Sunday broadcast, but still unable to hit the million marker. The undefeated Stallions and Stars garnered 905,000 viewers for the early game.
Capping off the week was the Pittsburgh Maulers grabbing their first win against the Houston Gamblers on NBC. Last week, NBC pulled in their biggest rating of the USFL season, topping 1.1M. This week, the numbers took a drop down to 692,000.
At first glance it would seem that the steam is dying off. But, to put things in perspective, they’re going against the NBA playoffs and still pulling in decent numbers. We always expected that we’d see peaks and valleys throughout the season, and the fact that we’ve essentially stable halfway through the season is only a good thing.
We expect that we’ll see the ratings go back over 1M as we head further into the season, especially as we get closer to the playoffs.
For all intents and purposes, the FOX executive team seems to be happy with the numbers they’re bringing in. The league is staying competitive against other sports brands that have huge rights deals, and it’s in its infancy.
We’ll keep you posted on the USFL ratings throughout the season. How do you feel the USFL did this week? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below or join the conversation on Discord.
