Less people seem interested in the third incarnation of the league.
XFL III is off and running and the first week of games suggests that perhaps there are not a lot of people who are interested in attending games. The league did get 24,245 people to attend the St. Louis at San Antonio game. San Antonio did well in getting people into the building in the abbreviated Alliance of American Football’s truncated 2019 season as the team averaged 27,721 people per contest in four games played in the city. The other three games drew about half of the San Antonio attendance. There were 12,784 people watching the Orlando at Houston game while in Washington 12,438 showed up for the Seattle at Washington contest. In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, where the XFL is housed, 12,047 people attended the Las Vegas at Arlington match up. Of course it is still early in the ballgame, so to speak, for the XFL. St. Louis, which was a strong XFL II city in attendance in 2020 before the league shut down its season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Orlando, which did reasonably well in the Alliance of American Football in 2019, Seattle and Las Vegas have not played home games yet.
The XFL has tough competition coming up. The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s March Madness, the Men’s College Basketball Tournament,  will be played opposite XFL games on March 18th, 19th, 25th , 26th and on April 1st. There is the Masters Golf Tournament on April 8th and 9th. Major League Baseball kicks off its season on March 30th, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League begin their playoffs in April. Major League Soccer’s season has started. The United States Football League’s schedule will overlap with the XFL’s slate of games in April. New or rebooted leagues start off well but interest dwindles and that is what the XFL is trying to avoid.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
