Battlehawks slip in attendance, TV ratings but still finish atop UFL: Media Views (2024)

It’s three for three for St. Louis, which supports spring pro football like no other market has in this century.

The Battlehawks led the United Football League in television ratings and attendance in the just-completed regular season, just as they did with the XFL in their two stints there before that circuit merged with the United States Football League over the winter to form the UFL.

And with the first football playoff game in St. Louis since January 2004 looming Sunday and the league title game that could include the B-hawks being played downtown the following weekend, those numbers might grow.

The club was not making an attendance projection, although as of Thursday ticket sales seemed a bit slow —at least by Battlehawks standards. But a big late push this week or next could have St. Louis break its own

ttendance record (40,317) for a spring pro football game in this century.

Nonetheless, the city won’t shatter any all-time such records. A USFL game played in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1984 drew 73,227 — the Dome at America’s Center doesn’t have that kind of capacity.

But there also is a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine stashed in the case otherwise filled with Dom Perignon chilling in the back of the Battlehawks bandwagon.

Despite again leading their league, the Battlehawks just completed their worst season in terms of television ratings and also had a slight drop in attendance over last year.

Turnstiles spin

Let’s look at the numbers.

The Battlehawks drew an average of 34,365 fans to their five regular-season home games, despite one having a very inconvenient starting time of 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning with the Cardinals playing nearby in a partially overlapping slot. That one drew 32,403 and partially accounted for the dip in average attendance from last season’s 35,104 figure.

Still, the Battlehawks more than doubled what any other team in the league averaged, and their smallest crowd (31,757) was more than twice the biggest turnout any of the other seven teams had. In fact, the B-hawkers were involved in the best-attended game outside of St. Louis, when Birmingham pulled in 14,056 to see the Stallions upend the Battlehawks four weeks ago.

Last year, the B-hawks’ home games were the top five attended contests in the XFL.

So while the B-hawks have been a success story at the gate, the rest of the league has not.

“That’s the biggest challenge so far in Season 1,” UFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Daryl “Moose” Johnston, a former Dallas Cowboys fullback and longtime Fox Sports NFL commentator, told the Post-Dispatch several weeks ago. “St. Louis isn’t even where we want it to be.”

That might change this month in the football-starved market that still has a chip on its shoulder — and a something-to-prove attitude — after being scorned by the NFL eight years ago. That’s when Stan Kroenke was allowed to move the Rams back to Los Angeles after years of neglect so he could rip the area for not blindly supporting his intentionally rancid Rams, thus bolstering his exit plan.

TV turndown

Just as with attendance, the Battlehawks suffered a slim dip in their local television ratings over last year.

Nielsen, which tabulates viewership, says 3.4% of the market tuned in on average to their 10 games, down from their 3.5 figure a season ago. But both figures are a major plummet from the 6.7 rating the club generated in its inaugural season, 2020, which was cut short after five games because of the coronavirus pandemic. The club and XFL did not resurface for nearly three years.

St. Louis again was the top-rated market among the UFL’s eight cities for telecasts of the home team’s games, with Birmingham coming in second (2.8).

The B-hawks’ best-rated game this year was 5.5 for their opener. They hit 4.8 twice, including last week for their narrow victory over San Antonio that set up a playoff rematch Sunday in St. Louis, but reached a 3 rating or better in only one of their seven other contests. That despite nine of their games being on over-the-air stations, which typically draw more viewers than cable/satellite/streaming outlets.

Last year, when conversely nine of their games were not shown over the air, seven of them drew at least a 3 rating.

By comparison, the Battlehawks’ 3.4 rating was better than what the Blues’ local telecasts averaged (2.9) this year and tied the hockey figure from last season. But there are caveats. The Blues play many more games than the B-hawks, thus lessening the impact of most individual contests, and a good number of them are at oddball times. Plus, all those hockey telecasts were on cable (Bally Sports Midwest).

For the league as a whole, Fox executive Michael Mulvihill said in a tweet that regular-season games drew an average of 812,000 viewers nationwide, a 33% increase from last year’s combined USFL-XFL games.

A key factor in the rise was that a much larger percentage of games this season were shown on over-the-air stations than last year, when there was a much bigger cable presence for the competing leagues.

Still, three of the UFL’s teams (Arlington, D.C. and Houston) failed to attract even 1% of their market. Interestingly, all those areas have NFL franchises. Only one of the UFL’s five other clubs, all of which rated better, is in an NFL city — Michigan (Detroit).

On the air

Fox (KTVI, Channel 2 locally) televises Sunday’s XFL Conference championship game, with Curt Menefee (play-by-play), Joel Klatt (analyst) and Brock Huard (sideline) handling the on-air assignments. Kickoff is set for just after 6 p.m. Fox also shows the UFL title game the following Sunday.

• There also will be a local radio broadcast of a Battlehawks game for the first time, on KFTK (97.1 FM). Tom Ackerman, sports director of KFTK sister station KMOX (1120 AM), has the play-by-play with former Rams coach Mike Martz providing commentary. A pregame show airs at 5:30 p.m.