The United Football League is a professional American football minor league which started play in March 2024. The league was created following the XFL–USFL merger of the latest incarnations of the XFL and United States Football League (USFL). It consists of eight teams, all of whom were members of the XFL or USFL prior to the UFL's creation, concentrated in the Midwest and Southern United States.
Teams[]
USFL Conference[]
- Michigan Panthers
- Houston Roughnecks
- Memphis Showboats
- Birmingham Stallions
XFL Conference[]
Past Leagues[]
1983-86[]
Main articles: United States Football League (1983)
Like almost all startup pro football leagues, the USFL had some off-the-field factors that prevented the league from starting out with their preferred membership. The problems started when the original owner of the Los Angeles franchise, Alex Spanos, pulled out and instead became a minority owner (and eventually majority owner) of the NFL's San Diego (now Los Angeles) Chargers. Jim Joseph, a real estate developer who had lost out to friend Tad Taube for the USFL's San Francisco Bay Area franchise, had thought he would be content to be a part-owner of the Oakland Invaders. When the potentially more lucrative Los Angeles franchise became available, Joseph snapped up the rights to the area. The owners of the USFL's San Diego franchise, cable television moguls Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon, were denied a lease for Jack Murphy Stadium. While this was in part due to pressure from the Chargers, the main opposition came from Major League Baseball's Padres who held the lease to the stadium at the time and did not want to see football played at the facility throughout the baseball season. Los Angeles was seen as critical to the league's success, and Dixon and Simmons felt that two cable moguls would be better suited to head the league's efforts there. Joseph was forced to move his operation. The team opened play in Phoenix, Arizona, where it became the Arizona Wranglers. Daniels and Harmon's team became the Los Angeles Express.
The League's Boston franchise, the Breakers, also had stadium problems. The Boston ownership group wanted to play in Harvard Stadium, but were unable to close a deal with the university; Sullivan Stadium was owned by the New England Patriots, who were unwilling to share their venue with a rival, while Fenway Park was being used in the spring by the Boston Red Sox and was also unavailable, and Alumni Stadium on the campus of Boston College, for reasons never made public, also declined. Finally they were able to negotiate a lease to play at Nickerson Field on the campus of Boston University, a facility that seated only 21,000 people.
There were plans to establish four franchises in Canada prior to the inaugural season, located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal and the Toronto/Hamilton metroplex (with the last of these to play at Ivor Wynne Stadium). The proposal was pushed by John F. Bassett, the Canadian who would go on to own the Tampa Bay Bandits USFL team. However, Senator Keith Davey warned that the Canadian government would act to protect the Canadian Football League (the league in which in all four of the aforementioned Canadian cities had teams in) from competition. The Canadian Football Act had been proposed, but not approved, when Bassett had tried to establish the Toronto Northmen in the World Football League in 1974. Such legislation would have banned US football leagues from playing in Canada. In particular, Montreal's CFL team, the Concordes, was on precarious financial ground, having just been established to replace the recently folded Alouettes. This led Bassett to drop the idea.Once play actually started, the league experienced the same kind of franchise instability, relocation, and closures that almost all pro football leagues, including the NFL, experienced in their early years.
In August 1984, the USFL voted to move from a spring to a fall schedule in 1986 to compete directly with the NFL. This was done at the urging of New Jersey Generals majority owner Donald Trump and a handful of other owners as a way to force a merger between the leagues. As part of this strategy, the USFL filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League in 1986, and a jury ruled that the NFL had violated anti-monopoly laws. However, in a victory in name only, the USFL was awarded a judgment of just $1, which under antitrust laws, was tripled to $3. This court decision effectively ended the USFL's existence. The league never played its planned 1986 season, and by the time it folded, it had lost over $163 million (equivalent to $380 million in 2023 dollars).
2001[]
Main articles: "The Xtreme Football League" (2001)
The XFL was a professional American football league that played its only season in 2001. The XFL was operated as a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and NBC. The XFL was conceived as an outdoor football league that would begin play immediately after the National Football League (NFL) season ended, to take advantage of the perceived lingering public desire to watch football after the NFL and college football seasons conclude. It was promoted as having fewer rules to encourage rougher play than other major leagues, while its telecasts featured sports entertainment elements inspired by professional wrestling (and in particular, the WWF's then-current "Attitude Era"), including heat and kayfabe, and suggestively-dressed cheerleaders. Commentary crews also featured WWF commentators (such as Jesse Ventura, Jim Ross, and Jerry Lawler) joined by sportscasters and veteran football players. Despite the wrestling influence, the games and their outcomes were legitimate and not based on scripted storylines.
The XFL operated as a single entity with all teams owned by the league, in contrast to most major professional leagues, which use a franchise model with individual owners. The league had eight teams in two divisions, and each franchise was based in a market that either currently had an NFL team (New York/New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco); had previously supported other pro leagues like the United States Football League, the original World League, or the Canadian Football League (Memphis, Orlando, Birmingham, Las Vegas); or was the largest market without a professional franchise (Los Angeles). Co-owner NBC served as the main carrier of XFL games, with UPN and TNN also carrying selected games.
While plans were made to continue without NBC (with plans for expansion teams as well), UPN allegedly made inordinate demands of the league, which hastened its demise. The league ceased operations entirely in May 2001.
2018[]
Main articles: 2018 Alliance of American Football season
The Alliance of American Football (AAF) was a professional American football minor league. The AAF consisted of eight centrally owned and operated teams in the southern and western United States, seven of which were located in metropolitan areas with at least one major professional sports franchise.
Founded by Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polian in 2018, the AAF began play on February 9, 2019. The league was scheduled to have a 10-week regular season and conclude with a championship game on April 27. After eight weeks of play, however, the league's football operations were suspended by controlling owner Thomas Dundon on April 2. Two days later, the AAF allowed players to leave their contracts to sign with NFL teams. The AAF filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 17, 2019, with the league's sole season left incomplete.
The AAF positioned itself as an "upper-level minor league" serving as a transition between the college game and the NFL.
Back Ground[]
2020–2021[]
Main articles: 2020 XFL season, 2020 The Spring League Fall season, and 2021 The Spring League season
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 Dwayne Johnson (a former WWE wrestler under the name "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 into 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[]
Main articles: 2022 USFL season, 2023 USFL season, and 2023 XFL season
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 (backed by former Memphis Mad Dogs owner Fred Smith) 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[]
See also: XFL–USFL merger and 2024 UFL dispersal draft
In September 2023, Axios reported that the XFL was in advanced talks with the USFL to merge the two 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. 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.
2024 season[]
Main article: 2024 UFL season
The regular season began on March 30, 2024, and ended on June 2, 2024. The season kicked off with a matchup between the 2023 XFL champion Arlington Renegades and the 2023 USFL champion Birmingham Stallions. The postseason started on June 8, 2024 and concluded on June 16, 2024 with the 2024 UFL Championship.
The Birmingham Stallions defeated the San Antonio Brahmas 25–0 in the 2024 UFL Championship Game, the only shutout of the entire season, to win their third consecutive spring football championship, adding to their back-to-back championships in the rebooted USFL.
The UFL championship game is the annual championship game for the UFL at the end of its season in order to determine its league winner for that season. It began in 2024 and has continued ever since, usually taking place in the second week of May. Unlike the Super Bowl, which alternates where its championship game takes place every year, the UFL championship game always occurs at The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
2025 season[]
Main article: 2025 UFL 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[]
Main article: 2026 UFL season
The 2026 UFL season will begin on March 1, 2026 and will conclude with the 2026 UFL Championship Game on May 16 in St. Louis.
Team relocations[]
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.
League Champions[]
List of UFL championship games[]
Every winning team in bold.
| Season | Winning team | Score | Losing team | Location | Stadium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Birmingham Stallions (1) | 25–0 | San Antonio Brahmas | St. Louis, Missouri | The Dome at America's Center |
| 2025 | DC Defenders (1) | 58-34 | Michigan Panthers | ||
| 2026 |
Appearances by year[]
In the sortable table below, teams are ordered first by number of appearances, then by number of wins, and finally by year of first appearance. In the "Season(s)" column, bold years indicate winning Championship Games.
| Apps | Team | Wins | Losses | Win % | Game(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Birmingham Stallions | 1 | 0 | 1.000 | 2024 |
| 1 | DC Defenders | 1 | 0 | 1.000 | 2025 |
| 1 | Michigan Panthers | 0 | 1 | .000 | |
| 1 | San Antonio Brahmas | 0 | 1 | .000 |
Players[]
Each team carries 75-men roster to training camp, then in the regular season rosters will cut down to 50 (45 active on game day). The minimum stay on injured reserve is five games, while season ending injured reserve designation guarantees player a camp invite the following season.
While the UFL embraced more of a "developmental league" mentality, they are also targeting veteran backup players, with Johnston saying: "there are a lot of guys who are at peace that their NFL window has closed, but they love the camaraderie of the locker room. They love the day-to-day grind... That's been the really inspiring thing to me, is there is a number of guys in our league who just love the game and want to keep playing it as long as they can. Players that have three or four years in the NFL and want to kind of rewrite that narrative, the way that they’re being viewed by front offices in the NFL, they want an opportunity to come into the UFL and change that narrative". Johnston also mentioned that the league would like to change the narrative, from "developmental league" and starting to talk about the "sustainability of spring football": "I think one of the things that we’ve started to have conversations is what do we want our new messaging to be? We do want to move off of the developmental component. We want to get away from the opportunity component. We want to talk about the talent of the players that are in this league... (compare to) spring football that you have seen in other iterations, this will be the best talent that if you’re a fan of spring football, you will have seen in recent history".
Unionization and compensation[]
Local 9004 of the United Steelworkers, which had served as the labor union for the USFL in 2023, continued in that capacity for the UFL for the 2024 season, operating as the United Football League Players Association. (This is not to be confused with the United Football Players Association, which Local 9004 disowned during the 2023–24 offseason.) The league will continue operating under the USFL's collective bargaining agreement.
Initial reports suggested that, contrary to the 2023 XFL season, quarterbacks would not be allowed to sign for salaries higher than the other positional players. However, the UFLPA later clarified that the agreement with the league is for minimum salary only, and any player could sign a personal contract above the minimum. As late as January 2024, the league had resisted "pushback" from some of the higher-paid XFL quarterbacks to increase quarterbacks' salary, with Johnston at the time refusing to deviate from the plan to pay all players equally while acknowledging "there's a good argument for both sides. How do we manage this situation(...)? It's hard to thread that needle."
Select XFL players, who had voted against joining the USW in 2023, expressed concern about the lack of winning bonuses (a key feature of the XFL's pay structure) and a requirement to pay union dues, while some players decided not to return to the league, citing the pay cut as a contributing factor. On an interview after the merger, Battlehawks QB AJ McCarron revealed that XFL players were in advanced talks with the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) for exclusive representation.
On August 12, 2024, the UFLPA announced that United Steelworkers had ceased representing UFL players. In a statement, the UFLPA recommended its members affiliate the UFLPA with an established union, strongly hinting not to affiliate with the United Football Players Association. The UFPA stated that it had won an election to serve as the UFL's union on October 12.
Salary[]
UFL players' minimum salaries will be $5,500 per week ($2,500 for inactive players) and $150 a week toward 401K contributions, with $400 a week house stipend and $55-a-day per diem stipend during travel days. All contracts will run from January 1 to August 24. During training camp, all players will receive $850 a week. Players on injured reserve will receive $2,500 a week (plus house stipend). UFL players will also be entitled for "players accolade bonuses" for Player of the week ($1,000), All UFL ($2,500), Player of the year ($5,000), and MVP ($7,500). The overall league player budget is $24 million.