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Kevin Safart
The United Football League is planning a series of changes in the market after adding full rights to entrepreneur Mike Repole to his investment group and giving full rights over his business operations.
In an interview with ESPN, Repole stated that the League would transfer at least two of its domestic markets and possibly for the 2026 seasons in four times. One of the new markets will be Columbus, Ohio, where the team will play at the historic crew stadium, MLS Columbus Crew. The League has not yet finalized any other new markets, nor has it decided which markets it will leave. Repole said that the number of teams will remain on eight.
However, the report clarified that it prefers markets that have small stadiums compared to some college features that UFLs have played for the last two years. Columbus will have a capacity of around 21,000. He said that the “site and attendance” are their top priorities in creating a more vibrant perception of the league.
“Vibi is not done where it should be,” he said. “You can hear a pin drop when someone walks at a distance of 80 yards. It’s not so good. Anyone wants to turn on TV and watch 10,000 fans in a 65,000 -seater stadium. It’s like watching a covid game.”
The UFL has achieved the presence success in St. Louis, where Battlehox has average about 30,000 fans per game per game in the US center. But the remaining markets have an average of the presence paid between around 5,000 and 12,000. In 2024, only one team played at the stadium with a capacity of less than 20,000 – DC defenders in the Audi Field. The other seven domestic stadiums had a capacity between 40,000 and 65,000.
Repolat suggested that improving sports-day environment will increase the popularity of the league. He said that if he is not able to run the presence of 10,000 to 15,000 per game for each team, “I am going to take all the faults there.”
Rumle, who cofked Vitaminwater, Smartwater and Bodymer and then sold them to Coca-Cola, join a ownership group including Redbird Capital Partners, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Dani Garcia, Fox and ESPN. He has kept a bold vision for the expansion of 10–12 teams within the next five years and to achieve 16 teams-half size within 10 years.
Spring football landscape is filled with unsuccessful leagues since merger with NFL with AFL in 1970. But in 2026, the UFL will become one of the two leagues, which will join the original USFL (1983–85) to make it in the third consecutive season.
“We are going to be aggressive as far as to be agile and scary and gritty and aggressive tricks,” he said. “If by 2035, if we cannot have 16 teams, I am going to consider it a personal failure. This is. Other leagues do not have the capital that this league does not have media veterans who are near this league, they do not have entrepreneurs who have this team.”
The league lasts in its two sessions until the end of June by the end of March, with a 10-game schedule in each season.
In the short term, eight league teams will continue to practice on a site, which is likely to be in Arlington, Texas. But the repuls said that it would change in the coming years. In the short term, it is possible that the teams will spend two or three days around the game in their home market, instead of one, to give more risk to players and coaches to the local community.
“You can’t be a real league in five years and your DC team in Arlington,” he said.
