The NFL won the war. St. Louis won the Battlehawks. Perhaps no city has taken it harder when the local NFL team skipped town than St. Louis, suing the Rams and the league when football went back to Los Angeles and settling out of court for $280 million. But just because the city is done with the Rams, they clearly aren’t done with pro football: Over 40,000 people went to the UFL’s game between the St. Louis Battlehawks and Arlington Renegades last week, a number that is about four times bigger than the average attendance anywhere else in the league.
During Saturday’s two contests in Arlington and Birmingham, there were a combined 20,600 fans in attendance. The Battlehawks face the San Antonio Brahmas on Sunday, and their last home game had 13,164 fans in attendance.
The Battlehawks had similar numbers in St. Louis during the 2023 season but 40,000 tops any number from last year. Meanwhile, it seems the other cities that had teams in 2023 have lower attendance numbers; interest there seems to be waning whereas fans in St. Louis are even hungrier for more football.
Will the NFL return to St. Louis? The numbers suggest that both parties would benefit from an olive branch, but the NFL is likely too busy eyeing international sites for expansion.
The lowest attendance numbers in 2023 averaged between 61,000-63,000 among the Patriots, Cardinals, Raiders, and Bears. So the St. Louis Battlehawks aren’t quite beating those numbers but they have a UFL team, not an NFL team, and they’re only 20,000 behind several NFL teams. Including one that won six Super Bowls recently.
2024-04-14 16:32:51
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