UFL FOOTBALL IN UTAH?
Brice Wallace
Business Journal
Are you ready for some football?
Some sports-trackers think Salt Lake City is a prime location for a future pro football team. Not in the big-boy NFL but the little-boy United Football League.
The springtime UFL has announced plans to expand from its current eight-team format, and sportswriter speculation shows that Salt Lake City could be a leading candidate, despite the lack of interest and attendance witnessed during the last spring-football venture, the Salt Lake Stallions in the Alliance of American Football.
The UFL was formed in 2024 by merging the XFL and USFL. The UFL currently has the Arlington Renegades, Birmingham Stallions, Michigan Panthers, Houston Roughnecks, Memphis Showboats, San Antonio Brahmas, St. Louis Battlehawks and D.C. Defenders. Its second 10-week regular season kicks off March 28. Its championship game is scheduled for June 14.
The league said in November that it had launched its first expansion process. It is looking for cities with several core attributes, including fan interest and existing sports culture, geography and population, and venue and infrastructure availability. It did not say how many teams it is looking to add, or when, but sportswriter speculation has been two for 2026 and perhaps two more in 2027.
Nick Wojton, managing editor of USA Today’s Sports Media Group, listed five potential expansion locations, with Salt Lake City listed No. 1. “With their brand-new hockey team, Salt Lake City is one of the newest and emerging locations for pro sports,” Yahoo said in a photo caption accompanying Wojton’s piece.
Others on Wojton’s list are Louisville; Oakland/Sacramento; Orlando; and Mobile, Alabama.
James Larsen of Pro Football Newsroom lists Salt Lake City among three expansion location possibilities, with the others being Columbus, Ohio; and Louisville.
“Salt Lake City is a market that hasn’t seen professional football for a few years — but is familiar with the product,” Larsen wrote. “The Salt Lake Stallions of the AAF were a part of the sports ecosystem for several months, but did not draw large crowds. Their biggest crowd was the home opener in week three, with 10,412 showing up to Rice-Eccles Stadium.”
Larsen said Salt Lake City is intriguing because of venue options, which include Rice-Eccles Stadium, with a capacity of over 51,000, and America First Field, a soccer stadium accommodating just over 20,000.
“Salt Lake is on the smaller side compared to the cities previously mentioned, with a population of 209,953 — but does present some promise to the UFL if they wanted to expand further west,” he said.
ColumnsXFL lists potential new markets as Oakland, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Orlando, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, New Jersey and Pittsburgh.
Ryan Pawloski of Still Curtain said Pittsburgh and several other cities “make plenty of sense.” Others include Las Vegas, Orlando, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
“They just got a hockey team, so why not keep adding some sports teams to Salt Lake City?” he wrote. “They are a growing city, and it has become a bigger market in recent years. It might not be an NFL organization, but many in Utah would certainly welcome a UFL club to their city. They have a couple of professional sports teams now, and adding a UFL franchise would only show off their sports economy more.”
“The Salt Lake City franchise was in the now defunct AAF,” Los Mysterio said on Facebook. “The UFL is thinking of eventually expanding West and Utah is there and ready for a professional football team.”
David J. Hunt at Yardbarker.com pegs Salt Lake City at No. 8 on a list of 20 possibilities.
“With a population of 200,000 and a solid college football fanbase, Salt Lake City gives other prospective NFL cities a run for their money,” he wrote. “The Utah Jazz has called the capital of Utah home for decades. It’s the most populous city in a state with no football team. This one’s a no-brainer. Like the Utah Jazz, an NFL expansion team in Salt Lake City could simply go by the state’s name instead of the city they play in. This will attract more fans from a wider area.”
Anthony Miller of Sports Illustrated did not include Salt Lake City on his list, but did include Seattle; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; Harrison, New Jersey; Canton, Ohio; Louisville; Omaha, Nebraska; Orlando, Florida; and New Orleans.
Bill Barnwell, staff writer at ESPN.com, listed several UFL possibilities, including a few in the West.
“One obvious choice, given that SLC already has the Jazz and just added the former Arizona Coyotes to its roster,” he said of Salt Lake City. “With more than a million people in its metro area, Salt Lake City would be the one city we’re adding in the West that wouldn’t have much trouble at all filling an NFL-sized stadium with fans.”
The Salt Lake Stallions did have that trouble. One of eight teams in the Alliance of American Football, the Stallions began play in February 2019 at Rice-Eccles Stadium as the league’s northern-most team. Led by head coach Dennis Erickson, the team went 3-5 before financial troubles prompted the league to suspend operations in April, two weeks short of its planned 10-game regular season.
Sometimes plagued by cold weather, the Stallions had the AAF’s lowest average home attendance, at 9,125. In comparison, San Antonio lead the league with an average of 27,720.
Salt Lake City had official attendance of 10,412 for its home opener on Feb. 23 that year, but the numbers generally dwindled: 9,302; 8,150; and 8,405. And the actual number of “butts in seats” appeared to be a small fraction of those figures and a source of amusement.
Ryan Larson of SB Nation called the attendance of 10,412 for the first home game “to put it nicely, dubious.” 3DownNation said the game was attended by “nearly nobody.”
“The game was played at Rice-Eccles Stadium, home of the Pac-12’s Utah Utes,” 3DownNation said. “The stadium seats 45,807 people, which means that the Stallions fell approximately 45,000 ticket sales shy of a sellout.”
After the fourth home game, attendance continued to be “pathetic,” wrote Damond Talbot of NFL Draft Diamonds. “This game was super boring and I feel bad for the 8,405 that actually paid for a ticket of this game.”
During one home game, an open microphone during a break in TV coverage featured one person involved in the broadcast saying, “Nobody’s watching, nobody’s listening, nobody cares.”
In the UFL in 2024, the league average attendance was 12,828, but St. Louis’ average of 34,365 skewed that figure. Non-St. Louis teams averaged 9,739 fans per game. The second-highest average was in D.C., at 14,143. The lowest average was Memphis at 6,893.