The 2025 UFL season is the second season of the United Football League. The Birmingham Stallions are the defending champions where they defeated the San Antonio Brahmas 25–0 in the 2024 UFL Championship Game, the only shutout of the entire season, to win their third consecutive spring football championship, adding to their back-to-back championships in the rebooted USFL.
Offseason
The UFL exceeded internal expectations for the 2024 season, with Fox Sports executive Eric Shanks commenting that, though the league still lost money, it was "ahead of the expected pace" in terms of achieving self-sustenance, while the league long-term goal is to solicit local investors in an owner-operator arrangement similar to that used by Major League Soccer and the previous United Football League.[1]
Television viewership rose substantially compared to the previous season as separate leagues, while ticket sales in most cities declined, prompting the league ownership to shift investment toward local ticket sales teams. The inaugural season of the UFL averaged 832,000 viewers per game this season, a 34% increase from the average of 619,000 viewers the USFL and XFL attracted last year, while the championship game on Fox drew the highest viewership with 1.596 million viewers.[1] However, the average attendance dipped from the XFL’s 2023 season average of 14,703 to 13,512.[2]
In an interview after the season Head of Football Operations Daryl Johnston said: "With our home markets, we’ve got to build that trust there — that we’re not going to leave or [that] the league isn’t going to fold. We’ve got a couple cities that historically have been a part of spring football, they’ve committed to a team and that team has left. … We’ve still got some trust to build in our home markets. We are going to be able to dial into the details. We’re going to have a traditional offseason calendar where we can be ahead of the curve instead of being in a position where we have to chase it a little bit".[3]
On July 11, 2024, the UFL announced they would hold the 2024 UFL draft ahead of the 2025 season on July 17th, 2024. The draft consisted of 10 rounds and eligible players will be those who were eligible for the 2024 NFL draft in April but went undrafted.[4][5] Memphis, winner of the first overall draft pick as a result of its week 10 victory in 2024, chose quarterback Jason Bean with the selection.[6]
Teams
As one of the conditions for approving the merger of the XFL and USFL, federal regulators were said to have "prefer(red) more opportunities" (eventual expansion teams) than the eight teams that were included in the 2024 season.[7] No such expansion is planned for 2025, nor are any relocations, as Daryl Johnston stated that the ticket sales in most of the poorer-selling markets could be improved by showing stability and following a more "traditional offseason calendar."[8]
Locations of current teams for the 2025 UFL season, (USFL Conference – red; XFL Conference – blue)
Players
On August 12, 2024, the United Football League Players Association released a statement announcing that United Steelworkers, which had represented the association (and its predecessor for the USFL), would no longer represent the league's players. The statement also strongly recommended that the players organize under another established union and not affiliate with the United Football Players Association, with which the USW and UFLPA had fallen out in 2023, without a "confidential background check."[10]
Coaches
Three of the four coaches who came into the UFL by way of the XFL—Arlington's Bob Stoops, St. Louis's Anthony Becht and DC's Reggie Barlow—are believed to be reaching the end of their guaranteed XFL contracts, and will be subject to new terms that the USFL coaches and all assistants agreed upon in 2024 that were less generous than the 2023 XFL's were.[11] (The lone exception, San Antonio's Wade Phillips, is on the second year of a two-year contract extension he signed prior to the merger.[12]) Stoops, the league's longest-tenured coach and the only remaining coach from the inaugural 2020 XFL season, was noncommittal about returning after the 2024 season, stating he was open to returning for 2025 but that "you never know what the structure is going to look like."[13] Becht announced he had committed to a third season as the Battlehawks' coach in August 2024.[14]
DeFilippo had coached the Showboats in 2024 after coaching the contracted New Orleans Breakers in 2023, with a combined record of 9-11 (.450), with his season with the Breakers at 7-3 (.700) and the Showboats at 2-8 (.200). His resignation coincides with the resignation of general manager Dennis Polian.[15][16]
Season structure
Preseason
This is the third and final year of the league's agreement with Arlington, Texas, to serve as the league's centralized hub.[17]
Regular season
The league is divided into two conferences, the USFL Conference and the XFL Conference, each a continuation of its respective league. Each team will play a ten-game schedule with no bye weeks, playing two games against each conference rival (one home and one away) and one game against each team in the other conference, all eight teams playing in their home markets.[9][8]
The postseason will have four teams, with the first and second-ranked team in each conference playing in the XFL Championship Game and USFL Championship Game, the winners of which will advance to the 2025 UFL Championship Game, which will be held at a neutral site chosen among the league's eight markets as a reward for strong fan support and attendance.[19]
Media
Television
In the United States, the television rights for the UFL are held by Fox and ESPN (which is under its third season of a five-year deal),[20] On season two, some games are expected to be moved to Friday night broadcast windows, to accommodate Fox’s new IndyCar deal and to fill a notoriously difficult-to-fill void on the Friday schedule left when WWE SmackDown returned to USA Network.[1] Most of the advertising revenue the networks will collect is being sold as part of bulk agreements with Fox Sports and ESPN Inc. and not as a standalone television series.[1]