Column: UFL’s Reliance on St. Louis Market Runs Risk of Overexposure

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where noted donut-lover Homer Simpson is fed, by machine, donut after donut into his face hole, his body plumping up with every additional sugary breakfast treat.

I feel like right now St. Louis is Homer, and the machine feeding donuts, in the form of spring football, is the UFL.

Whether it’s through greed or incompetence, the UFL is risking wearing out the St. Louis fanbase, the one fanbase that has responded most positively to spring football since the Battlehawks debuted in the market in 2020.

In the first season of the UFL last year, St. Louis was awarded the championship game. No question it was a deserving city – and no question UFL ownership was hoping the Battlehawks would make that championship game to all but guarantee a full house. Alas, they fell one game short and the Birmingham vs. San Antonio game, in a neutral market, drew many fewer fans than attended St. Louis regular season games.

But that wasn’t enough. The UFL continued in 2025 to try to milk this cash cow for everything it’s worth. When San Antonio could only host four home games at the Alamodome instead of five, that fifth game needed to be made up somewhere. The league could’ve chosen any other two-time opponent of the Brahmas to give that home game to – or even chose a neutral site – but it was St. Louis that received a sixth home game.

Then, for the 2025 league championship, St. Louis once again was announced as the host. It seems ownership is doubling down on its hope that the Battlehawks will reach the championship and play at home for the UFL crown. Rather than test the waters in a city that doesn’t have a UFL team – remember, the league is open for business when it comes to expansion, and hosting the league championship would be a good test of interest – or even award it to another deserving market, St. Louis was the choice once again.

There are already signs that the UFL is on the path to killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Five of the six games played in St. Louis this year would qualify as the least-attended games last season. Average attendance for the six regular season home games has fallen from 34,365 last year to 29,537 this year, a nearly 15% decrease.

That’s not to say St. Louis is a failing market; on the contrary, they’re still far and away the best UFL city in terms of attendance, and it’s not even close. It would likely take years to erode the market to the point that it rivals many of its competitors throughout the league.

But eroding the market is what the effect may be given the decisions UFL management is making. And they seem to be short-sighted decisions in order to make as much money possible off ticket sales in the near term. On one hand, it’s difficult to blame the UFL: They see an avenue to make revenue in a revenue-starved business, and that’s hard to pass up.

But is it fair that St. Louis is the only team that gets six home games in 2025? Why not play that fifth San Antonio home game in Arlington, where the league is based? The only legitimate reason is to continue to milk the St. Louis fans for all they’re worth.

The same thing goes for the playoff game. When it was revealed that D.C. could not host a game if they ended up as the number one seed, once both teams qualified for the playoffs, St. Louis was announced as the host. In his post-game press conference after D.C.’s week eight game, Defenders QB Jordan Ta’amu wondered aloud why they couldn’t play in Arlington for that game. He has a point. The UFL is lucky that Ford Field in Detroit was also out as a potential host on the UFL Conference side because there’d likely be more blowback if the only game to be moved was to St. Louis.

But that brings up a question: Why wasn’t league management nimbler in figuring out a way to find an alternate location, as opposed to giving the number two seed homefield advantage, which defeats the entire purpose of battling to win a conference championship and has served to make the last couple week of the regular season moot for those teams?

Why COULDN’T they play one – or both – of those games in Arlington? Why couldn’t they find a third party city to play in? They should’ve been aware of this scheduling snafu since the beginning of the season. Were they just hoping this was a situation they wouldn’t have to deal with?

It's not the first time they’ve met with this dilemma either: The same thing happened last season when Ford Field was unavailable had Michigan won its conference. They didn’t, but the same problem cropped up again this year, and the solution was to give a home game to the number two seed? That stinks, and makes the UFL look like a minor league outfit.

St. Louis is a great city for the UFL and they deserve their flowers. But an extra home game? And the second year in a row hosting the championship game? That seems a bit much. UFL ownership and management are squeezing every penny they can out of the market, potentially at the expense of its long-term viability. They keep feeding St. Louis the donuts; how long can the fans there take it?