The 2026 UFL has officially concluded with the Louisville Kings defeating the DC Defenders 27–20 in the United Bowl at Audi Field in Washington, D.C. This season was the first under new co-owner Mike Repole, and we can now evaluate whether his changes delivered results. Before the season, I wrote about attendance goals. Overall, the results were mixed—let’s break down each team’s 2026 attendance numbers.
Birmingham Stallions – 8,248
The Birmingham Stallions faced pressure to have solid attendance numbers due to the reports that they were nearly relocated. Sadly, they did not succeed. Their first home game that had Gucci Mane performing hit 18,340 while no other game even hit 9K. Without that home opener their average attendance falls to 5,726. For reference, the Stallions had an average of 9,149 last year with the only outlier being a poor 4,744 number compared to this year having three games that were within a few hundred of that terrible 2025 number. The attendance was a such a concern that even the media would ask questions to HC AJ McCarron.
AJ himself was a big reason for the drop in attendance as him and his staff failed to match the standard Skip Holtz had set. The Stallions finished 4-6 which is their first time ever finishing below .500 even if you include the original USFL. With Protective being one of the largest stadiums in the league and with the previous near relocation one has to wonder if the Stallions at the very least move to a different stadium next season. My established goals were an 11,000 average and 9,000 minimum.
Columbus Aviators – 10,362
The Aviators ended up being the worst team this season which did hurt their attendance. Overall, they did get close to hitting the goals I set for them. My established goals were a 12,500 average and 10,000 minimum. These goals were due in part because of the team they replaced in the Michigan Panthers who were the only team to see improved attendance between 2024 and 2025 with their 2025 average being 11,681. The Aviators’ 10, 362 was almost within 1K of the 2025 Panthers which is great considering the poor on field display. The Aviators did have an outlier home opener with 14,810 while never again hitting 11K, but they did not have one of the huge halftime performers to boost the numbers like Birmingham or DC. It is safe to assume that if the team was even two-three games better that they would have hit an 11K average.
Dallas Renegades – 6,449*
The Dallas Renegades were one of the two teams to relocate stadiums while not being an expansion team along with the Gamblers. The move may have saved money but backfired when it came to attendance. Last year in Choctaw they averaged 9,763 compared to this year’s 6731 average in Toyota. The biggest issue was where Toyota is located within the DFW area as Choctaw was in a much more centralized location than Toyota is.
The asterisk comes from the last home game of 2026 that was hosted by Fort Hood in front of 5,321 people. While the attendance number was not anything huge the atmosphere of this game was actually pretty good. Many fans have expressed interest in this being a yearly tradition for the Renegades to play one home game at Fort Hood. Overall, Dallas was a disappointment this year. Even when you consider the location of Toyota, seeing around a 33% drop in attendance is not what you want to see.
DC Defenders – 10,671*
The defending champion DC Defenders ended up having disappointing regular season attendance. For the regular season the team averaged exactly 9K per game. This was around a 32% decrease from their 13K average in 2025. DC also had 3 games fail to hit 8K with another that fell just short of 10K. Only their home opener with Wale and the Championship that was played in DC hit over 10K. The Defenders had never had a game with under 10K people before this season.
The 2026 United Bowl was a big success for DC however. While it technically is considered a neutral site game we all know the league was happy to finally have the hosting city’s team make it to the game. Due to DC being in the game I feel it is okay to count the United Bowl’s attendance, but even with it their attendance is still nowhere near what it was. The United Bowl’s 19,023 sellout number is a record for DC beating their two 18,684 sellout games in 2023 in the XFL. Hopefully we are able to see DC bounce back in attendance next season and go back to 10K+ being the norm.
Houston Gamblers – 5,683
How much is there that needs to be said about Houston? The market has been hit with a combo of bad decisions and on the field play. Having the Gamblers in the USFL never play in Houston, then the Roughnecks of the XFL that did play in Houston, decided to keep the Gamblers and rebrand them as the Roughnecks instead of just keeping one brand fully, then finally rebranded them back to the Gamblers while maybe keeping both the Gamblers and Roughnecks history. Just a total cluster. That does not include them playing in a different stadium every year either. 2023 – TDECU, 2024 – Rice – 2025 – TDECU, and 2026 – Shell Energy. If you include the Gamblers in the USFL with their hub method the Gamblers played at Protective in 2022 and then moved to Liberty Bank in 2023.
Houston’s 5,683 was essentially identical to last year’s 5,712. Funnily enough, this means that percentage wise Houston was actually the best of the 5 returning teams. Obviously, this is one case where percentage increase or decrease does not matter that much since sub-6K is a really bad number to average. The home opener with Ludacris performing had 7,744 people in attendance compared to their second-best number of the year of just 6,217. The worst part is that the in-person attendance for all the games was nowhere near any of the announced numbers. It routinely looked like these games had under 2K people actually in the stadium. Even in 2024 the team only averaged 7,056. While Houston is a media juggernaut, one has to wonder when enough is enough with poor attendance and the league decided to relocate the team out of the market.
Louisville Kings – 11,195
The Louisville Kings were a complete success this past season! They were the only team that actually hit both of my goals from the article I made before the season. In that article I said the goal for them should be a 9K average with a minimum game of 7K. The Kings averaged over 11K and never had a single game under 10K. This is in spite of the team having multiple home games on weekdays and even a rain delay on one of them.
The other reason their numbers were so impressive is that they started 0-3. We have heard people say for years that if you have a bad record that attendance would suffer, yet even before the Kings started winning, they were getting 10K+ every single game. The Kings ended up winning the first official United Bowl this season! Hopefully we see this translate to even more success for the market next season.
Orlando Storm – 9,244*
The Storm did technically just barely fail to reach my goals for them. They did succeed in hitting over 8K in every game but even without the playoff game they fell just short of the 10K average I set as the goal with them hitting 9,830 for the regular season. The important extra goal I had for them was to do better than the 2023 Orlando Guardians which they succeeded. The Guardians had an 8,913 average with three games hitting under 8K. The Storm this season only had one game under 9K with an 8.6K number in week 2.
The emphasis on the regular season attendance is due to the weird playoff issue Orlando faces. Due to scheduling conflicts, it initially was announced that the Storm’s playoff game would be played in Columbus. This ended up changing a week before the game when the UFL announced that they could host the game at Daytona Stadium. The combination of the late announcement and the game being away from Orlando both led to a season low 6,317 attendance. That is what dragged the attendance down to 9,244 from the 9,830 regular season number. The attendance did look good due to the size of the stadium, but a season low is still technically a season low. Overall, Orlando was a big success with them beating the 2023 Guardians and nearly going 5/5 for 9K+ games in the regular season.
St. Louis Battlehawks – 22,384*
The Battlehawks saw an attendance drop for a third straight season. While their attendance went down in ’24 and ’25, this time was a big drop. The Battlehawks saw around a 23% drop in attendance this season. The worst part is how every game but week 1 failed to hit 25K. That is a big deal because the Battlehawks had never had a game under 25K until this year where we saw 5/6 fail to hit that mark. That also included week 7 and their playoff game failing to even hit 20K. If you eliminated their playoff game their attendance only rises to 23,239. Compared to the rest of the league St. Louis is still far and away the best market but based on percentage change they were down there with Dallas, DC, & Birmingham for markets that saw a big decrease in attendance as well as record low numbers.
Final Thoughts
League-wide attendance fell roughly 14–15% from 2025 (consistent with reports of a double-digit decline). The new/expansion or rebranded markets (Columbus, Louisville, and Orlando) performed best relative to expectations. Every returning market saw a significant drop except Houston, where the numbers were already very low and essentially flat. Halftime concerts helped individual games but had limited carryover effect. The league would benefit from redirecting resources toward sustained marketing, ensuring teams are firmly rooted in their home markets with consistent venues, and building organic fan engagement rather than relying on one-off boosts. Hopefully 2027 begins a trend of attendance stabilization or growth after several years of declines.
