The ºüÀêÊÓƵ Battlehawks were the hands-down leader in attendance in the XFL last season, and the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ is being rewarded for that by being named the site of the inaugural championship game of the newly formed UFL.
The game will be played at the Dome at America’s Center in June, a UFL spokesman confirmed on Thursday.
The league has a news conference scheduled for this morning at the Dome to announce the news.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ was the obvious choice, maybe the only choice, for the league formed by the merger of the XFL and USFL. The Battlehawks averaged 35,104 fans last season, almost 20,000 fans more than the next-best XFL team in the league, the DC Defenders.
The USFL, which played its games at four centralized locations, did not release attendance figures last year but didn’t draw any crowds that came close to what the Battlehawks drew.
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The XFL and USFL, maybe one more minor-league football league than the world needed, merged in December, with five teams from the XFL and three from the USFL forming the new league.
In 2023, the XFL championship was played at a neutral site in San Antonio and drew 22,754 to the Alamodome, about 8,000 fans more than the San Antonio team averaged in the regular season. The USFL played its final in Canton, Ohio; again, no attendance was announced.
The questions, of course, are will the dedicated fans of the Battlehawks turn out for a game that may not involve them and will fans from other cities travel to watch the championship game?
ºüÀêÊÓƵ football fans, who have never forgiven the NFL for the unceremonious moving of the Rams to Los Angeles, have embraced minor-league football since the XFL came here in 2020, drawing big crowds at the Dome that year before COVID paused the season and then led to the league’s total shutdown.
When the XFL restarted last season, it was as though they had never left. The Battlehawks drew big crowds, but failed to make the playoffs despite a 7-3 record that had them tied for second in the North Division, while the second-place team in the South Division advanced with a 4-6 record.
The Arlington Renegades, the champions of the XFL last season, averaged 12,055 fans and the team they beat, the DC Defenders, averaged 16,112.