The Josh Innes Show - UFL Has Basically No Audience

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

There is a great myth that America is addicted to football. This is false. America is addicted to the NFL and to an extent college football. America doesn't care about crappy start up leagues. America doesn't care about minor league football. I'm in St. Louis, the only city that pretends to be interested. Even St. Louis is losing interest. I will share with you the reason St. Louis pretended to care in the first place... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Headline at Pro Football Talk reads, UFL continues to slump in comparison to 2024. Let's see what the details are. Of course, UFL is this dinky football league that nobody in the world gives a shit about, but because the Rock is involved, they've been able to swing a deal and get on Fox, but nobody gives a shit. Outside of St. Louis, which again, we've explained that. We can do it again here, but St. Louis cares because it's a Spite store.

But let's read the story and then we'll get into that. The story reads, In 2024, the UFL had a promising debut as the merged XFL and UFL. This year, the early objective measurements aren't great. By our calculations, the TV ratings for week two of the 2025 UFL fell nearly 30% in comparison to week two of the 2024 season. Via Mike Mitchell, Friday night's game between Birmingham and Michigan on Fox generated 659,000 viewers on average. Saturday's ABC game between Memphis and DC generated 621,000 viewers. Sunday's Houston at Arlington contest on ESPN averaged 613,000

viewers and San Antonio and St. Louis drew 516,000. That's an average for the four games of 602,250. In week two of the 2024 season, the average audience was 844,500. That's a drop of 242,500 per game. Even in St. Louis, the best market in the UFL, there's reason for concern. Last year, the home opener attracted 40,317 fans. This year, the week two home opener drew 32,115, a 20% drop. Well, I can tell you why that's happening. People love football and

people are addicted to football but people love football and are addicted to football that they grew up with and that they like and that matters and has the best possible players so they're addicted to college football in some places they're addicted to college football more than they are pro football but um this idea that just the world's addicted to football thus other football leagues that aren't the NFL or college will work is poppycock because it's been proven that none of them work no one gives a shit and if those games weren't on actual networks that you know people would just find by accident like if you had to seek them out like if you had to seek them out, like if you had to flip on Fox Sports 1 to find the, or like, you know, true TV. If you had to flip on true TV to find a UFL game, many people would never see

it. It would have like 100,000 viewers. People don't give a shit. I am in St. Louis. This is the one town where people at least feign giving a shit. Like you can go into a sporting goods store and you can purchase UFL merchandise. There is UFL specific merchandise and all the cute little quirky local t-shirt stores that sell really cool like Cardinal shirts and blue shirts. They sell a shit ton of Battlehawk stuff. I don't know if they sell a ton of it. I mean, let me put it this way.

I don't know if people buy it, but they attempt to sell it. So it exists like there, you know, like there is a level of interest here that you're not going to see. I guarantee you in any of the other cities, for example, I forgot if it's at churches or wherever the fuck it is. It's one of the fast food chicken places, Lee's chicken, maybe here. There's like a battle Hawks meal deal deal so like the battle hawks have some level of interest here but that's because we're a dopey sports town that doesn't have an nfl team and we've been jilted multiple times uh by uh the bidwells and then uh cronky therefore spitefully fans are going to see these games and that's why there's any sort of interest let me play a couple commercials we'll continue all right if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs you

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People legitimately do not give a shit if the battle hawks win or lose. So you might say 32,000 people. That's so pretty impressive that 32,000 people attended a football game in a league where most of the games are drawing like 5,000 people. So 32,000 is still impressive, but they had 40,000 for their opener last year. And they've had stretches where they've had to open up more seats, like open up the upper deck, for instance, in the dome, uh, to sell tickets. So they've had moments. And I think the championship game here would have had a huge attendance last year had they been in it, but they did not get into the championship game. Therefore like eight people that should tell you what you need to know

about whether or not St. Louis really gives a shit about the UFL and the Battle Hawks. Battle Hawks weren't in the championship game last year, and like 10 people showed up for the championship game. So St. Louis is not a UFL town. St. Louis is a let's spite the NFL and Stan Kroenke by showing how many people we can put into a stadium for a shitty UFL game as some sort of like true gauge as to whether or not the the st louis deserves the nfl which by the way i think st louis should have an nfl team it's a major american city and i don't believe it's the fans fault that football didn't work here you want to talk about just getting a shitty break you had the bidwells and the bidwells couldn't get their new stadium in the 80s therefore the bidwells left for left for Arizona where they didn't get a new fucking

stadium for about 15 years or so. Maybe more, maybe less. I forgot how many years they left in 88. I forgot when they opened up their new stadium sometime in the early 2000s. So they had at least a decade and a half of not having a new stadium. They played in a shitty college stadium in Tempe, Arizona. So they leave. Then you get the Rams.

The Rams play in this dumpy ass dome, which is basically a convention center. Uh, no real tailgate set up for anyone anywhere. It's a shitty situation, but the fans kept going and really like, this is a misconception about St. Louis. Cause when a team, this goes back to our discussion the other day about how things are viewed differently when you're in a city versus people who are outside and only have a wider view and not a more narrow view. Like I gave you the example of Andy Reid. Andy Reid objectively is a wonderful coach. And now that he's won a couple of Super Bowls with Kansas City, he's an all-time great. He was already on pace when he was in Philadelphia to be one of the winningest coaches in the history of the NFL.

But just like every hot chick has some guy that's ready to kick her out of bed, the Philadelphia people lived a different life with Andy Reid than the outside world saw. The outside world would look at him and go, how the hell can you be pissed at Andy Reid? But you don't look at the minutiae every day and see everything that goes on and see where fans would be annoyed by it. Same thing here in St. Louis. If you look at the Cardinals, you'd go, holy shit, this team has been a gold standard franchise for the last two decades, two and a half decades. Why are people not going to the games? Well, they've made the playoffs like three times in the last 10 years. They haven't won a playoff series since 2019. People hate the manager. They hate the GM and the downtown area

sucks and people are sick of it. So like from the outside, same thing, the Memphis Grizzlies and now, well, the Memphis Grizzlies fired their coach. If you don't watch the Memphis Grizzlies on a night in, night out basis, you'd think it's ridiculous. If you do watch them, there's probably something you could learn about the team and something that the fans see that the outsiders don't, right? So that's kind of how it is with St. Louis as a sports city. Like I think St. Louis could and should have an NFL team.

If Cincinnati can have an NFL team and Cleveland can have an NFL team, why the fuck shouldn't St. Louis have an NFL team? The reason the NFL is not here is not because the fans were not interested. They kept going to games even when, I guess it was post-2004. 2004 was kind of the last run for the greatest show on turf. And then progressively the teams got worse and worse and worse. And the Dome was a shitty venue. People had nowhere to tailgate. Downtown St. Louis got worse and worse.

Yet, people still went. They didn't sell out the games. But if you say it's a 60-something thousand seat stadium, they were putting in, I mean, probably 85%, 90% capacity for a shitty team, right? So this was not a situation where the fans can't sustain or the fans can't support a football team. That is not the case. And if you would have given them a brand new, beautiful stadium on the river like was proposed way too late, people would have gone to that stadium. That is 100%. It's the NFL. People are going to go to the games. If Jacksonville can have an NFL team, St. Louis can have an NFL team, a Phoenix. Trust me, people were interested and they cared. But the problem is you give them bad football for a decade and a half and you give them

an owner that is from the state yet is threatening to leave all the time and then does people eventually tell you to fuck off and how does this relate to the ufl this is the reality and the st louis people won't admit it they want to act like they give a shit about the battle hawks they just want to dick swing over the fact that they attend games better than anybody in this dinky ass ufl and they do this because it's spite there's an old episode say an old episode it's a relatively current episode of curb your enthusiasm where larry goes into mocha joe's coffee place to get a coffee and the coffee's cold and he gets into a fight with mocha joe and then out of spite he decides to open up his own coffee store right next door to mocha joe's that's spite store the battle hawks fan attendance the people

going to the game they're doing so out of spite the battle hawks are their equivalent of a spite store right so people go just so they can say it's like doing charity just so you can say you did charity and look good to your friends you're not actually doing the charity because you want to do it like you didn't go visit kids at St. Jude because you give a shit about the kids at St. Jude. You visited St. Jude so you could post the pictures on your Instagram to show that you went to St. Jude so you can get the internet clout. You're not doing it because you genuinely care. That's what you're getting out of people here in St. Louis as it relates to the Battle Hawks. The St. Louis Battle Hawks are a team that people attend the games so they can say, hey, look at us. We love football, but you don't give a shit

about the Battle Hawks. You don't give a fuck. And nobody in the league cares about any of the teams. And it's funny because they use the same cities all the time for these fucking teams, these same cities that no one ever goes to the games, like Birmingham or Memphis. There's not a soul that's going to those games in Memphis. No one cares about the Memphis showboats in Memphis in this USFL. But Memphis always gets one of these teams because they have a stadium. The stadium's not news. Hey, bring a team to Memphis. Hey, let's bring a team to Arlington. Oh, let's bring a team to St. Louis. Oh, let's bring a team to Random Town, Michigan. Oh, let's do this. And Birmingham, it's the same cities all the time. San Antonio, all the same cities all the time. They get these same shitty football teams in the

same shitty football leagues and no one goes to any of the games and nobody gives a shit. And that's what you're getting. The only difference with St. Louis is St. Louis is trying to prove a point that we deserve football here, and they do, by the way. There's no debating that. Like, this city can support the NFL. It's bullshit to think they can't. Now, I don't know about the corporate sponsorship. I don't know about the business money.

That's a fair question to ask. I'm sure L.A. has a lot more than St. Louis had to offer in terms of money for corporate sponsorships and everything like that. But if it's just down to straight-up fan interest and will fans go to games, people would have. I've never been inside the dome, which is now called the dome. It's just, it doesn't have a sponsor. It's just the dome. When it opened, it was the TWA dome and then it was the Edward Jones dome. And now it's just the dome. And as far as stadiums go, I've never been inside. Seemingly it it's clean but it is basically a convention center it's a dump it's no there's no fan there's no place for fans to do anything it just sucks so um the fact that people went to any of the games there as they went to them as things were falling apart

is commendable and then you could argue and go well joshua st louis isn't going to baseball games yeah because the baseball team's fucking terrible and they don't like the people involved with the baseball team anymore. They're not going to go. I think what happens is people get hung up on the, oh, I thought they were the best fans in baseball. Listen, every fan base is the same. When the team is good, people go to the games. When the team is bad, most people stay away. Like Philly people like to dick swing.

I'll always get some guy on social media when I talk about the Cardinals. Oh, what about the best fans in baseball? Hey, fuckface. I used to go to all, not all of them, but I used to go to Philly's games pretty frequently whenever they were terrible and nobody was there. You could have shot a cannon through the stadium

and hit nobody. It was empty. Same thing with the Astros. Yeah, the Astros people go to baseball games now because the Astros have won a couple World Series. Back in 2010, eight, nobody was at the fucking Astros games. Could have shot a cannon through there as well. So if you didn't know, now, you know, you know, the origin of, or the backstory as to why people in St. Louis attend these games, because again, I don't think they give a shit if the team wins or loses. I don't know that they

can name two players on the team. But I guarantee here in St. Louis, this is the only town in this little league where dudes that play for the UFL team go on radio shows. You'll go to the radio station. They introduced me to some guy. I couldn't tell you who the fuck he was. But they were like, hey, this is such and such. He's the kick returner for the Battle Hawks. And I'm like, neat. You know, like, cool. Neat. You I'm like, neat, you know, like cool. I need,

you want to have them on? No, I don't. I I'm going to go play UFO now. And I'm not going to be talking to the kick returner for the fucking battle Hawks, but I guarantee you don't walk into Dallas. I guarantee you, you don't walk to the sports radio station in Dallas and go like, this is Steve Smitherson, the kick returner for the renegades of Arlington or whatever the hell they're called. And go, hey, you want to get them on the air? I guarantee you they wouldn't even let them in the fucking building. So St. Louis is the only town where that actually has a chance to happen. But it's probably going to be a very short-lived thing.

Anyway, more to come.