A year ago, the Alliance of American Football debuted to strong television ratings. But viewership eventually cratered and the upstart spring football league folded before the end of its debut season.
A year later, the XFL is also having hard time retaining viewers.
Television ratings continued to fall in Week 4 after an impressive debut just weeks earlier. According to Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp, the XFL averaged just 1.38 million viewers over the weekend across four games — down from 1.61 million the week prior.
The XFL’s debut weekend averaged 3.12 million viewers last month and the numbers have dipped every week since.
XFL viewership in Week 4 (four games across ABC, Fox, ESPN2, FS1) was down 14% from Week 3
— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) March 3, 2020
Week 1: 3.12 million
Week 2: 2.05 million
Week 3: 1.61 million
Week 4: 1.38 million
Despite the decrease, it should be worth noting the XFL has performed well relative to other sports and shows on television. For example, Saturday’s game between the Seattle Dragons and the St. Louis BattleHawks actually outdrew the NFL scouting combine on ABC, drawing 1.8 million viewers to the NFL’s 976,000. Both events happened at the same time.
• Matthew Paras can be reached at mparas@washingtontimes.com.
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