The USFL is the first major spring football league since the original USFL to finish its inaugural season.
Unlike the Alliance of American Football and the 2020 version of the XFL, the second incarnation of the United States Football League has survived and has gotten to a championship game that will feature the Philadelphia Stars and Birmingham Stallions. The AAF folded after eight weeks of play in 2019 and Vince McMahon’s XFL suspended operations after the initial COVID-19 wave in March 2020 and never returned. The USFL Championship Game will be played in the stadium near the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. The United States Football League has pretty much been ignored by the sports media but apparently has performed well enough for its owner 21st Century FOX and FOX Sports and done well enough on TV for Comcast’s NBC TV, which has a marketing partnership with FOX. NBC seems satisfied with its investment in televising games and the network brass claimed the USFL is doing as well as the National Hockey League and the English Premier soccer league drawing viewers. But little else is known about the business side and the real finances of the league.
Players’ salaries seem to range between $45,000 and $75,000 a year with the higher end of the scale paid to players as bonuses based on wins and getting to a championship game. The players seem to think the league is going to be lasting as players voted to form a union with the United Steelworkers as a partner to help better represent their collective bargaining interests and protect their rights. The 2022 USFL was based in Birmingham, Alabama where every league regular season game was played. It is unclear if FOX is going to actually play in the cities and arenas that have USFL names. The league will also get a spring challenger in 2023, the third version of the XFL but there is a championship game to play.
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