UFL Season Two Plans Do Not Include Expansion

After an impactful first season of the UFL, fans are wondering what's next for the league in 2025.

Fox Sports’ Eric Williams spoke with Daryl Johnston, the league’s head of football operations, to get some insight into what the plan for Season 2 looks like. Some of the topics brought up include expansion, player talent performance, TV ratings and marketing in 2025.

Shooting down a fan-favorite topic, Johnston confirmed with Williams that there won’t be league expansion in 2025, and all the teams are staying in their home markets. The league wants to keep everything the same, as it will get a full offseason to put it all together.

"We are going to be able to dial into the details," Johnston told Williams. "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.”UFL Head of Football Ops Daryl Johnston

The league wants to do more in its teams' home markets this year. With the short ramp-up time from the merger to the start of the regular season, the lack of time to sell tickets wasn’t enough to attract more fans to the game.

"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," Johnston said. "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.”

"I think we were selling tickets for the home opener in Houston seven days out and in Michigan seven days out. Last year was getting the merger completed, getting everything in place and then putting the season together. This year, we’ve already been planning for season two of the UFL nine months out."

SI.com’s Mike Mitchell reported earlier in the week that the UFL’s average attendance number dipped from the XFL’s 2023 average of 14,703 to 13,512 this year.

There were two big positives from the season the league can tout: player talent and TV ratings. It helps to have big names like St. Louis Battlehawks quarterback A.J. McCarron and Birmingham Stallions MVP quarterback Adrian Martinez bringing star power into the season. That level of player can help attract others to join the league for a shot at making the NFL.

The ratings on television have also been solid, as the UFL averaged 832,000 viewers per game this season. This is a 34% increase from the average of 619,000 viewers the USFL and XFL attracted last year.

Going into the offseason, the league knows there is much work to be done. The foundation has been set to ensure football fans that spring football finally has a league that stands on its own two feet.