College Football, Basketball Provide Road Map for UFL Ratings Success on Friday Nights
The UFL has a major opportunity to grow its viewership this season: They’ve been given a weekly, prime time, Friday night timeslot on network TV. League co-owner FOX has branded Friday nights as a destination for sports following their decision not to continue airing WWE Smackdown after being its home for five years.
Since then, college football and college basketball have taken up residence on that night. The UFL will take over on March 28 with the St. Louis Battlehawks visiting the Houston Roughnecks to open the league’s kickoff weekend. Arguably the most important metric to the UFL’s long-term survival is its viability as a television product. It is, after all, co-owned by two television networks in FOX and ESPN. If the UFL can approach ratings drawn by established sports properties on this night and time, it will go a long way in convincing ownership to continue to invest into the future.
Fans have long wanted consistent timeslots for spring football, which has often bounced around network schedules, not a priority in comparison to those entities for which stations have doled out billions of dollars to acquire. FOX is giving the UFL a home, on the same night and time, for 10 weeks to try to build a following. And it won’t be from scratch: Because sports have been airing in that spot since September, there’s already an established audience, some of which is likely to carry over to the UFL.
That’s not to say this is a guarantee for success: Friday nights are notoriously difficult to draw an audience, especially the younger demographic, a demographic the UFL is specifically seeking (though the upside is that expectations will likely be low). We can learn a lot about those expectations based on the ratings data we have for college football and college basketball on Friday nights. It’s as close to an apples-to-apples comparison that we’ll get. The first table below includes the college football games that aired in the future UFL timeslot, the numbers they drew and any notes, specifically related to competition they may have faced on that night.
If you take into account only the eight games that aired in the regular, 8pm EST timeslot on FOX, viewership average was 2.313 million with a .50 in 18-49. Removing the outlier of Illinois at Nebraska in the second week, which drew nearly double the viewers of any other game, and the average dips below two million to 1.9.
Keep in mind, the UFL Championship game last year was the league’s viewership high-water mark on the season at 1.596 million. Granted, that was mostly out of prime time and being in prime time should provide a small boost (and the number could’ve been higher had it not been a blowout). But to expect games to reach college football levels would be foolhardy: League management would be doing backflips in their new Arlington digs if that happened.
For the most part, college football bested what Smackdown had been doing on Fox, at least in total viewers. The 18-49 demographic numbers were closer, indicating an older audience for college football. That 18-49 number is important because it drives advertising dollars and sponsorship, which has a significant effect on how much networks are willing to pay for broadcast rights, and in this case, how much revenue Fox can make off of the UFL.
It’s also worth noting that on November 1, when there was no game and FOX ran repeats of two of its most popular shows, both drew under one million viewers. That should really be viewed as the floor (not to be confused with another FOX game show, The Floor) for UFL games. If FOX - or ESPN/ABC for that matter - can draw the same number of viewers for cheap, repeat programming as they can for the UFL, in which they’re investing tens of millions of dollars every year, that doesn’t bode well for the league.
November was a down month in comparison to earlier in the season, as every game failed to meet the year-long average on Fridays, though competition and later start times may have played a role. Note the significant increase for Conference Title games and the bowl game at the end of the season. The gulf between highest and lowest-rated college football games is wider than we’ll see in college basketball.
FOX aired 12 regular season college basketball games for an average of 1.145 million and a .23 in 18-49. This is much more attainable for the UFL in terms of viewership expectations. Even the Big East tournament games that aired on March 14, while up, were not up as significantly as college football’s post-season action. You can also see the damage big college football games had on basketball viewership, basically cutting it in half when competing head-to-head, and more than that in 18-49.
Aside from those two weeks, college basketball’s numbers were a lot more stable than college football’s. The big outlier here was the Michigan State vs. Michigan rivalry game, which drew the biggest rating in 18-49 and the largest viewership, though even then it was only 200,000 viewers better than the UFL Championship. The lack of a variety of teams on Friday nights was kind of interesting: Purdue played in a full one-third of the games, with UCLA also in three of them. Only two non-Big Ten games aired, both involving St. John’s, not exactly a national powerhouse in terms of a fanbase.
Context
Ultimately, these are just numbers. We can get a sense of what games will draw with enough of a sample size, which I believe we have for college football and basketball on Friday nights. But we’re measuring numbers against themselves; what about against the rest of television?
Taking into account where these games rank on the weekly chart accounts for dips in overall TV viewing on that particular night. A low viewership number could look bad, but if it still ranks highly, it shows that television viewership across the board was down that evening, making the number look better with that added context.
Measured against first-run primetime cable and network programming, three of the first four college football games ranked number on in 18-49, allowing FOX to finish first among networks in that category twice. As time went on, college football settled into 5th-7th place on Fridays in 18-49, placing anywhere between 11th-14th in overall viewership for the night. FOX’s median standing was 5th place among cable and broadcast networks in total viewers.
Into the winter months, FOX dropped a bit, landing at 6th or 7th in total viewers on Fridays, usually below the other big three broadcast networks, as well as ESPN and FOX News (or occasionally USA, the new home of Smackdown) on cable. Every college basketball game but two rated in the top 10 in 18-49 and with the data available, usually was 14th-15th in total viewers. So despite being well under college football’s average, there’s not a significant movement down the charts compared to the fall. These will be metrics, just as important as the actual viewership numbers, to compare to the UFL this spring.
Competition
The placement in the standings takes into account competition from other networks, which adds important context. By starting in late March, the UFL avoids the bulk of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, but week one may face Sweet 16 competition (times for that round have yet to be announced). The Women’s Sweet 16 game begins at 7:30pm EST on ESPN, so that may draw away some potential viewers as well.
While the UFL could draw an unimpressive number out of the gate because of this, it does give room for that number to grow in week two without that college basketball competition. UFL weekend games over the course of the season will face stiff sports competition from baseball, auto racing and more. Main competition on Friday nights will include night two of the NFL Draft at the end of April. The NBA Playoffs begin in mid-April, with only game two of the Eastern Conference Finals guaranteed to go head-to-head with the UFL in terms of Conference Finals (game six of the Western Conference Finals will be on May 30, if necessary). The Conference Finals air on TNT, at least giving the UFL an advantage in the strength of the station on which it airs. Plus, that’s the final week of the UFL season, featuring potential playoff implications in the D.C. vs. St. Louis game. If that’s the case, that could soften the blow as well.
The same goes for the NHL Playoffs, though that’s less likely to do damage unless a team makes the playoffs from the same city as a UFL team playing that night. On the “good news” front, most high-rated cable scripted and reality series’ avoid Friday nights, so the main competition will come from other sports.
Conclusion
There were enough college football and basketball games airing on FOX Friday nights the last several months to give us a road map for what success might look like for the UFL during its 10 weeks in the timeslot. Expectations should be tempered for all the reasons we always caution when it comes to TV ratings: Notably, teams and the league have not yet had time to cultivate dedicated fanbases, rivalries, star players and other aspects that make fans go out of their way to tune into games. As we’ve seen, just being “football on TV” isn’t enough.
The importance of UFL season two has been well-documented and cannot be overstated; I won’t belabor the point. Several metrics will no doubt be used by ownership to determine the viability of the UFL beyond 2025. A strong performance - or even a “good” performance - on Friday nights on FOX could go a long way toward getting to a season three. FOX has given the UFL the real estate to be successful. It’s now incumbent upon the league and FOX to do their part to ensure people know about the league, the timeslot it’s in, and give them a reason to tune in.
(Ratings data courtesy of Programming Insider, Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer, and Wrestlenomics).