The 2025 UFL season was the second season of the United Football League. The Birmingham Stallions were the defending champions after they defeated the San Antonio Brahmas in the 2024 UFL championship game to win their third consecutive spring football championship, adding to their back-to-back championships in the rebooted USFL. The Stallions were defeated in the 2025 USFL championship game by the Michigan Panthers, and the DC Defenders routed the Panthers 58–34 to win their first UFL Championship.
Offseason Fox Sports executive Eric Shanks commented about the UFL for the 2024 season that though the league still lost money, it was "ahead of the expected pace" in terms of achieving self-sustenance. The league's long-term goal was to solicit local investors in an owner-operator arrangement similar to that used by Major League Soccer and the previous United Football League. League president Russ Brandon confirmed that the league's losses in 2024 were smaller than anticipated. No numbers were made public regarding the league's financial losses, revenues, or expenses. Still, the XFL had projected revenue of $100 million for 2024 if the leagues had remained separate, compared to its $80 million intake in 2023. The outpacing of expectations came despite the short ramp-up time for the 2024 season and the complications it posed on the business side of the league, which Vice President of Football Operations Daryl Johnston blamed for some of the attendance underperformance of the 2024 season compared to years past. Later reports suggested that the 2025 season would be the league's last one if it did not achieve tremendous commercial success.
Television viewership rose substantially compared to the previous season as separate leagues. At the same time, ticket sales in most cities fell, prompting the league ownership to pivot investment toward local ticket sales teams. The inaugural season of the UFL averaged 832,000 viewers per game this season, a 34% increase from the average of 619,000 viewers the USFL and XFL attracted last year. In comparison, the championship game on Fox drew the highest viewership, with 1.596 million viewers. However, attendance dipped from the XFL's 2023 season average of 14,703 to 13,512.
In an interview after the season. Johnston said: "With our home markets, we’ve got to build that trust there — that we’re not going to leave or [that] the league isn't going to fold. We’ve got a couple of cities that historically have been a part of spring football; they've committed to a team, and that team has left. ... We’ve still got some trust to build in our home markets. We are going to be able to dial into the details. We will have a traditional offseason calendar where we can be ahead of the curve instead of being in a position where we have to chase it a little bit". In an October 2024 statement, chairwoman Dany Garcia highlighted two areas of improvement for the league in 2025: the league sought to improve its ties to local markets and the quality of play compared to 2024 for a more "dynamic" on-field product. In January 2025 interview UFL President Russ Brandon provided more details: "We have teams on the ground in each market, business teams, think AA, Triple A, baseball, front of offices that are on the ground, 365 days a year, promoting and singing the tune of what that brand means in that marketplace".
77 UFL players signed with the NFL for their 2024 preseason; of those, 21 players were on NFL rosters on opening week, including active rosters, practice squads, and injured reserve, with two players — Jake Bates and Jalen Redmond — making the 53 roster for week 1. Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah would later praise the UFL for its role in player development: "Growth opportunities afforded by the UFL can lead to better competition on NFL rosters. If players in the UFL ascend through the opportunity with professional organizations and access to continued coaching and structure, that provides us with valuable information to evaluate if those ascending players fit the characteristics we target to bring potential added value and competition to our roster".
The league's sponsorship agreement with the United States Army was not renewed after the 2024 season, after league co-owner Dwayne Johnson failed to deliver on the promised number of personal social media posts in the 2024 agreement.
Teams As one of the conditions for approving the merger of the XFL and USFL, federal regulators were said to have "prefer(red) more opportunities" (eventual expansion teams) than the eight teams that were included in the 2024 season. No such expansion is planned for 2025, nor are any relocations, as Daryl Johnston stated that the ticket sales in most of the poorer-selling markets could be improved by showing stability and following a more "traditional offseason calendar." In November 2024 the UFL announced the opening of an expansion window for no sooner than 2026, seeking out and inviting cities to present proposals for potential future expansion; a final decision on 2026 expansion is anticipated by the time of the 2025 UFL Championship in June. As of March 2025, Johnston stated that while they were looking to "creatively" tie into the league's extensive ties to the state of Texas, the UFL would not be restricting its expansion to the league's current geographic footprint and would instead take a holistic approach to determining what cities would have a realistic chance of successfully hosting a UFL team. League executive David Dykeman stated that two teams would be announced as expansion franchises at some point in 2025.
The UFL has maintained the Aviators brand from The Spring League, the only remaining trademark it has retained from that league, for future use for one of the teams; UFL News Hub, a Web site dedicated to covering the league, noted that it had anticipated Columbus, Ohio—from a state with a slogan "birthplace of aviation," a famous college football rivalry with Michigan, and a history of hosting USFL games in 2022 and 2023 in Canton—would, along with a revival of the Seattle Sea Dragons, be the most likely candidates for expansion. Pro Football Newsroom likewise predicted a Columbus expansion, noting that Raleigh, North Carolina was also being seriously considered in the event Seattle could not return. The UFL renewed four trademarks tied to USFL legacy properties, including those of the Tampa Bay Bandits, New Jersey Generals, and Philadelphia Stars (all teams that had been re-established in 2022 but did not make the merger with the UFL), along with the 1980s-era USFL's Oakland Invaders, in late May 2025. The Invaders revival proposal is reportedly being backed by Tom Brady, a former NFL quarterback and current Fox color commentator who was born and raised in the area and currently owns a minority stake in the Las Vegas Raiders. A later filing renewed the Oklahoma Outlaws, a state with two of the UFL's strongest local television ratings markets in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Ultimately, 31 cities submitted expansion bids. Boise, Idaho had progressed to the point of a verbal agreement in May 2025 to place an expansion team at Albertsons Stadium. The league eventually chose not to expand for 2026 but would locate three of the existing teams to new markets: Columbus, Louisville and Orlando.
On September 13, 2024, the Houston Roughnecks announced that they would be returning to TDECU Stadium (which would be renamed Space City Financial Stadium during the offseason) for the 2025 season, following renovations to that stadium. The previous incarnation of the Roughnecks had played at TDECU in 2020 and 2023; the current Roughnecks had played the 2024 season at Rice Stadium while Space City Financial Stadium was being renovated. On August it was reported that the Battlehawks will host six games in 2025, taking one home game from the Brahmas, as a result of the Alamodome major event commitments for the months of April, May and June. The Brahmas' home schedule is expected to be backloaded with the four home games concentrated toward the end of the 2025 season to minimize scheduling conflicts; league president Russ Brandon stated that it had considered moving the Brahmas to another stadium in the San Antonio metropolitan area but decided against it to avoid "some very complex operational concerns" that would arise by doing so.
The Michigan Panthers' lease on Ford Field expired following the 2024 season, forcing a delay in the sale of season tickets for that team. The league announced a renewal for the 2025 season on October 29, 2024.
+Teams in the 2025 UFL seasonConferenceTeamLocationStadiumCapacityFirst seasonHead coachUSFL Conference Birmingham Stallions Birmingham, Alabama Protective Stadium 47,100 2022 Skip Holtz Houston Roughnecks Houston, Texas Space City Financial Stadium 40,000 2022 Curtis Johnson Memphis Showboats Memphis, Tennessee Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium 44,000 2023 Ken Whisenhunt (weeks 2–3)Jim Turner (week 1, 4–10) Michigan Panthers Detroit, Michigan Ford Field 65,000 2022 Mike NolanXFL Conference Arlington Renegades Arlington, Texas Choctaw Stadium 48,114 2020 Bob Stoops DC Defenders Washington, D.C. Audi Field 20,000 2020 Shannon Harris San Antonio Brahmas San Antonio, Texas Alamodome 64,000 2023 Wade Phillips (weeks 1–3)Payton Pardee (weeks 4–10) St. Louis Battlehawks St. Louis, Missouri The Dome at America's Center 67,277 2020 Anthony Becht
Players Each team will carry 64-man rosters to training camp, compared to 75 in the 2024 season, with regular season rosters set at 50 (43 active on game day).
During the 2025 offseason, the UFL hosted seven player showcases across the United States from July to November in St. Louis, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Orlando, San Diego and Dallas, with selected players being included in the next UFL Draft.
On September 7, 2024, Memphis Showboats wide receiver Diondre Overton died in a shooting incident.
Unionization On August 12, 2024, the United Football League Players Association released a statement announcing that United Steelworkers, which had represented the association (and its predecessor for the USFL), would no longer represent the league's players. The statement also strongly recommended that the players organize under another established union and not affiliate with the United Football Players Association, with which the USW and UFLPA had fallen out in 2023, without a "confidential background check." Despite this warning, on October 12, the UFPA issued a statement claiming the UFL players had ratified an agreement establishing the UFPA as their union, and that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had recognized the vote. Negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement began in December.