US media giant Disney, the domestic rightsholder of the XFL rebooted American football league, is moving three upcoming games to its higher-profile networks in an effort to boost viewership.
The eight-team XFL is being broadcast domestically across the ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, and FX networks through a four-year rights deal with parent company Disney. All games are streamed on ESPN+ in the US and simulcast in 142 countries worldwide.
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However, after suffering an underwhelming return in terms of viewership in the first three weeks of its inaugural season, ESPN has now announced three upcoming games originally scheduled for FX will be moved to Disney’s higher-profile ESPN, ESPN 2, and ABC channels.
Two Houston Roughneck games against the Seattle Sea Dragons (March 16) and DC Defenders (March 17) have been moved to ESPN and ESPN 2, respectively, while the Seattle Sea Dragons’ clash against Orlando Guardians (March 25) will be broadcast on free-to-air channel ABC.
The moves follow a weekend in which FX carried three of four XFL games, which averaged 571,000 viewers across FX and ESPN 2, down 13% from Week 2 on FX, ESPN, and ESPN 2 (655,000).
FX has not aired sports since the early 2000s, when it was owned by Fox and aired occasional MLB games and Nascar stock car races, and it is understood Disney believes the low viewership numbers are due to people not being used to FX carrying live sports.
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By GlobalDataThe first week of the new competition, meanwhile, also suffered a significant drop of at least 50% from its previous edition in 2020, when the league returned for a season that was ultimately cut short due to the pandemic.
The first game between the Vegas Vipers and Arlington Renegades on ABC had 1.54 million viewers, which reflected a 54% drop over the 3.3 million who tuned in for the first game on ABC in February 2020.
The other game on ABC, St. Louis Battlehawks vs. San Antonio Brahmas, averaged 1.57 million viewers, a 54% decrease from the same window in 2020. The night games on ESPN and FX drew 1.14 million on Saturday and 918,000 on Sunday.
In its previous iteration in 2020, the XFL didn’t have any viewership below a million until the fifth week.
The league was relaunched after it was bought by a group including US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners, Dwayne Johnson, and Dany Garcia in 2020. The $15-million deal included all the intellectual property such as team names and colors.
It was first relaunched by WWE majority owner Vince McMahon in February 2020 – 19 years after its first and only other season in 2001 – but was suspended five weeks into its 10-week season due to the coronavirus and filed for bankruptcy.
The eight XFL teams are split into two divisions: XFL North (D.C. Defenders, Seattle Sea Dragons, St. Louis Battlehawks, Vegas Vipers) and XFL South (Arlington Renegades, Houston Roughnecks, Orlando Guardians, San Antonio Brahmas).
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