Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia on Sunday unveiled plans for the United Football League, the new spring pro football league born from the merger of the XFL and USFL. During an appearance Sunday morning on Fox’s NFL on Fox, the pair said the UFL‘s debut season will begin March 30, 2024, with a game between the Arlington Renegades and Birmingham Stallions, the previous champions from each league. More details are expected soon regarding teams and markets. A promo logo suggests games will be played on ABC, ESPN, Fox and FS1.
The USFL and the XFL, two football leagues that were revived in recent years in a bid to bolster the sport during the NFL’s off-season, have decided to merge. The new entity will “establish best-in-class operations based on the most recent seasons of both league,” the two sports groups said in a terse statement Thursday, noting that more details about the new organization would be released at a later date.
Pro football leagues XFL and USFL are in advanced talks to merge, three sources familiar with the situation tell Axios. Combining the two may be the smartest path forward for the leagues given the challenges and the history of failure for NFL alternatives. The merger would be structured as a merger of equals and would require regulatory approval, one of the sources said. The leagues hope to combine before the 2024 seasons.
The Fox Sports-owned United States Football League has hired investment bank Allen & Co. to find minority investors to help fund the league’s expansion, three sources with knowledge of the situation said. Fox’s plan is to raise between $150 million and $200 million, two sources said.
With another attempted return of springtime professional football, the USFL (United States Football League) offered up decent results — 2.9 million average viewers, per Nielsen’s Fast National metric via an unusual joint NBC-Fox Saturday night simulcast. This is the third time in four years that a spring professional football league has attempted to be launched.
Exclusives
While several spring football leagues have popped up in recent years, none have come close to packing the production-technology punch that is expected in USFL broadcasts. All games will be produced in 1080p HDR with many up-converted to 4K. Regardless of the quality of play on the field, one thing is for sure: the broadcast will look unlike any football game you’ve watched before. Above: Eight cameras have been mounted inside the stadium in Birmingham, Ala., to serve the optical tracking system that automatically measures first downs.
The USFL kicks off Saturday night in Birmingham, Ala., when the New Jersey Generals face the Birmingham Stallions. Fox and NBC Sports will each carry 22 games, including Saturday’s opener. It is the first time since the 2007 regular-season finale between the New England Patriots and New York Giants that a game will air on multiple broadcast networks. (WBRC photo)
An organization of owners and executives from the original United States Football League filed suit Monday in Los Angeles to block Fox Sports’ planned launch of a new version of the legacy league. Fox Sports’ USFL is scheduled to begin play April 16, with all eight teams using the same franchise names, logos and other materials associated with the original USFL, according to the lawsuit.
Looking to try to grab a big audience for springtime professional football, the new USFL’s first regular season game will be broadcast live by both NBC and Fox in primetime on April 16. NBC Sports and Fox have split the broadcast rights to the new league under multiyear deals. The game will feature the New Jersey General playing the Birmingham Stallions at Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Ala.
NBC Sports will televise USFL games along with Fox Sports when the pro football league returns in a new incarnation next spring. Starting in April, NBCUniversal will carry 21 USFL games in 2022, with eight on NBC, nine on USA Network and four on Peacock. Fox will have 22 games, 12 on its flagship broadcast network and 10 on cable’s FS1. The USFL’s 20 national over-the-air broadcast windows will exceed the number for any regularly scheduled sport in the first half of 2022, according to the league.
