Head coach Mike Nolan of the Michigan Panthers reacts against the Houston Roughnecks during the second quarter in the game at Ford Field on April 14, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images for UFL)
On Tuesday, UFL season tickets went on sale to the general public. For seven of the eight teams, that is. Unless you read the press release closely, you may have missed that the Michigan Panthers are the only team not currently selling season tickets. The league hasn’t explained why, only saying in the release that they would go on sale “at a later date.” All is not lost as you can still place season ticket deposits for the Panthers here.
The holdup likely has to do with reports that the Panthers’ lease with Ford Field expired at the end of the 2024 season. It’s possible the UFL is still looking at potential stadiums around the state (an advantage of being called the “Michigan” Panthers is that they’re not married to the Detroit area). And the league can’t announce a week-by-week schedule without first securing a venue. The longer this drags on, the more detrimental it is to the UFL being able to sell single-game tickets around the league.
The UFL can’t seem to shake spring football struggles in the areas of ticketing and venues. The XFL’s relaunch in 2023 famously featured the disastrous Vegas Vipers situation. Not only was Cashman Field dreadful from an optics perspective, but the search for a stadium was a drawn-out process. The announcement of the venue was made a little more than a month from kickoff, January 5, the same day the full league schedule was released. Single-game tickets league-wide didn’t go on sale until a week later.
The USFL played in hubs in its 2022 and 2023 seasons, removing much of the drama when it came to stadiums. Live attendance was a low priority for the league, so there was little in the way of controversy for ticketing, other than the fact that people weren’t buying them.
In 2024, the merger of the USFL and XFL extended into the winter. The official news of the UFL’s creation was made on New Year’s Eve. Much has been made about the compressed timeline leading up to the late March kickoff, notably from UFL management themselves in various interviews.
Though all the teams were announced a day after the merger was, single game tickets did not go on sale until February 22, again, just over a month until kickoff weekend. The schedule was released on February 5. The Panthers were behind last year in ticketing, too, but for a whole different reason: There appeared to be a transition in handling ticketing on the back-end, which resulted in the team’s tickets going on sale later than all other teams. Season tickets went on sale a week after the rest of the league – February 29, a month from kickoff – with single game tickets going on sale March 13, just over two weeks before they hosted their first home game.
Now, the Panthers once again appear to be delayed in selling tickets. But that’s not the only issue that has arisen with scheduling this off-season. An article from the San Antonio Express-News on Saturday noted that due to the Alamodome’s commitments during the UFL season, including hosting the NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament, the Brahmas are likely to have a back loaded home schedule. They’re also losing a home game because of these conflicts, and will play two games against the St. Louis Battlehawks in St. Louis.
UFL News Hub reported that the D.C. Defenders will continue to play only Sunday home games due to having to share Audi Field with the D.C. United MLS team. The United play on Saturdays, removing both Friday and Saturday as potential days the Defenders could host games. The reality is that UFL teams are not a priority tenant for these arenas and stadiums; one day they may be, but they have to earn that right.
For the most part, the UFL is on track for a “normal” off-season pace. Season tickets are being sold more than five months from opening day, with single-game tickets and a schedule announcement hopefully soon to follow. There continue to be flies in the ointment, however, with the Panthers ticketing/scheduling issue becoming the latest. If that gets ironed out soon, it’ll be just a small bump in the road for an otherwise smooth off-season. If, like the Vegas situation, it drags on, it could end up being problematic for a league seeking an increase in attendance across the board in 2025.
