In the heat of a frenzied sports weekend, it’s axiomatic that niche offerings will take a back seat to the events that traditionally command an outsized TV audience. Such was the case this past weekend, when tens of millions of fans keyed in on the denouement of the college basketball season at the expense of lesser spectacles such as spring football and one notoriously schismatic pro golf startup.
While the final stages of the NCAA men’s and women’s hoops tournaments kept the Nielsen dials spinning, the UFL and LIV Golf had a much harder time drawing a crowd. For the upstart football league, the women’s Final Four proved to be far too big to tackle, while the breakaway golf faction took a beating care of the UConn-South Carolina title tilt on ABC while losing a key head-to-head battle with its nemeses at the PGA Tour.
Now in its second season following the merger of the XFL and USFL, the UFL’s Week 2 deliveries were up slightly versus its March 28-30 premiere, but still lagged far behind last year’s numbers. Fox’s Friday night broadcast of the Birmingham Stallions’ 21-12 win over the Michigan Panthers notched a weekend-high 659,000 viewers in primetime, small potatoes compared to the 4.03 million fans who tuned in to ESPN for UConn’s 85-51 demolition of UCLA in the late nation al semifinal game. (The Texas-South Carolina lead-in tipped off ESPN’s night with an average draw of 3.37 million viewers.)
All told, the weekend UFL slate averaged 602,250 viewers across the four games, which marked a 29% decline compared to the league’s year-ago average (844,250). While the Week 2 deliveries showed an 8% improvement versus the opening weekend’s turnout (559,500), the UFL’s year-to-year declines are hard to overlook. Per Nielsen, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s spring league is averaging 580,875 viewers over the course of its first eight games, which marks a 39% drop-off compared to the analogous average of 946,250 viewers per game in 2024.
Thus far, UFL viewers have not returned with the same enthusiasm they displayed during the league’s first go-around. At this juncture in 2024, two UFL games on Fox had averaged north of 1 million viewers per broadcast—the St. Louis Battlehawks-Michigan Panthers opener scared up a season-high 1.35 million viewers, while the following afternoon saw the Birmingham Stallions-Arlington Renegades game draw another 1.18 million viewers—and two other outings on ESPN and another on ABC broke the 900,000-viewer mark. No telecast this season has come close to those heights, as Fox’s March 28 kickoff remains the most-watched 2025 game to date with 690,000 viewers.
The diminished interest in the UFL coincides with a labor dispute that threatened to derail the start of the season. The players’ union for the league on March 14 filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board, and ongoing negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement have failed to come to fruition. (While UFL player reps planned to personally deliver a letter concerning their grievances to Johnson during the season opener in Houston, he was a no-show after the entrepreneur’s plane was forced to make an emergency landing en route to the game.)
The women’s Final Four wasn’t the only drag on the UFL’s second weekend, as Saturday night’s Memphis Showboats-D.C. Defenders game on ABC (621,000 viewers) aired directly opposite Houston’s primetime upset of Duke on CBS (16.3 million viewers).
While college basketball’s hiatus should help the UFL recapture some casual fans, the Week 3 slate will run headlong into the ratings juggernaut that is the Masters on CBS. Johnson hasn’t been shy about wanting to grow the league’s TV deliveries in 2025, but unless there’s a significant spike in interest, last year’s season-long average of 854,250 viewers per game would seem to be well out of reach.
If the UFL’s growing pains are symptomatic of spring football’s well-documented struggles to build and maintain an audience at scale, the LIV deliveries suggest that there’s little appetite for the Saudi-funded golf league here in the States. In LIV’s first-ever head-to-head duel with the PGA Tour on broadcast TV, the old guard left the newcomers in the dust.
Sunday’s final round at Trump Doral in Miami averaged just 484,000 viewers on Fox, and while that marked a record high for an LIV telecast, the TV turnout was a fraction of what NBC managed with its coverage of the Valero Texas Open. Per Nielsen, Brian Harman’s win at TPC San Antonio averaged 1.75 million viewers, or more than 3.6 times what the LIV managed. That the no-name PGA event (most marquee players chose to sit out the Texas Open in advance of this week’s Masters) effectively ran roughshod over the LIV showcase is particularly noteworthy, given some of the names on Sunday’s LIV leaderboard. Two-time U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau finished fifth at two under, a notch above Phil Mickelson, owner of six majors.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the Miami event, new LIV CEO Scott O’Neil characterized the weekend as an “important” one for the league, before going on to say that he welcomed comparisons to the PGA. “Is this weekend important? Of course, it is,” O’Neil said. “This one is important … and it’s on Fox, and that’s an exciting opportunity. I have no problem being judged. Judge me this week, for sure.”
Negotiations on a proposed merger between LIV and PGA haven’t led to a signed contract, and the former’s presence at the Masters will be diminished, as only 12 LIV duffers will make the trip to Augusta. Among them are Mickelson, who won the Masters in 2004, 2006 and 2010, as well as 2023 champ (and $105.8 million man) Jon Rahm. Also vying for another Green Jacket are 2018 winner Patrick Reed and Dustin Johnson, who dominated the 2020 tournament with a record score of 268.
As of Wednesday afternoon, world No. 1 and PGA veteran Scottie Scheffler (2022, 2024) was favored to don the famed sportscoat come Sunday (+475), while Tour stalwart Rory McIlroy looks to complete his career Grand Slam at +625 odds. DeChambeau and Rahm are both in the mix at 15-1.
