ST. LOUIS — Gold and white confetti fell at The Dome at America’s Center on Saturday night as the DC Defenders put a bow on the United Football League’s second season by winning their first spring league title.
The UFL’s leaders will take a moment to bask in the glow of the championship game, which featured a record-breaking performance from the Defenders (58 points) and Jordan Ta’amu (390 passing yards, five total touchdowns).
But in the weeks after, the league will begin looking at ways to improve in planning sessions ahead of its 2026 season. That will include beefing up efforts to improve attendance, exploring expansion and considering several changes that could improve and make more exciting what it believes is an already strong on-field product.
Here’s a look at what’s next for the UFL as the league enters its second full offseason since the 2024 USFL-XFL merger.
Will the UFL expand for 2026 season?
The UFL has not yet announced any plans to expand for the 2026 campaign, but it continues to explore markets that could potentially house future teams.
‘We’re looking heavily into the process,’ Brandon said of expansion. ‘We’re taking a lot of rigor to it. We’re taking a lot of time and effort to do it the right way.’
The UFL’s executive vice president of football operations Daryl Johnston added that it’s ‘great’ to hear so many are interested in the league’s potential expansion.
However, he was adamant sustainability is at the front of the league’s mind as it evaluates potential UFL markets.
‘One of the things that Russ always talks about is incremental growth, and doing it in a way that is sound and provides us the opportunity to make sure this league is sustainable moving forward,’ Johnston said, before adding. ‘When it’s right for the league, that’s when we’ll make that decision.’
The league’s reticence about expansion comes after ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio reported USFL Enterprises LLC — which owns the USFL conference side of the UFL — had filed trademarks for the names of the names of four original USFL teams: Oakland Invaders, Philadelphia Stars, New Jersey Generals, and Tampa Bay Bandits.
The filings occurred on May 6, 2025. It isn’t clear whether the league views these as potential future market options or if it just wants to own the former USFL team names.
Either way, the UFL isn’t looking to rush into a hasty decision about expansion. The league is simply getting its ducks in a row as it considers the possibility.
‘I think as we stand now, we will continue to look at it over the next few months, meet with the board, and make some decisions,’ Brandon said. ‘But I think it’s in a very good place from a process standpoint.’
UFL attendance: League remains focused on improvement
Expansion is one of the UFL’s eventual goals, but improving its attendance remains one of its No. 1 priorities.
Those results could be viewed as discouraging given that the UFL invested resources into each of its markets for the 2025 season in the hopes of improving attendance.
However, Brandon outlined the 2025 campaign was the first ahead of which the league was able to really focus on its attendance goals. Much of the 2024 season was spent getting operationally situated after the USFL-XFL merger closed on Jan. 13, just two-and-a-half months before the start of the season.
‘We were drinking out of a fire hose operationally to get up and running,’ Brandon detailed.
But after learning more about consumer habits in 2025, UFL owner Dany Garcia explained the league has a better idea of what ‘The market actually thinks of us.’
‘This is the year that we got the clarity, and now we know who we are, and now we push forward,’ Garcia said.
As such, the league’s focus investment in market-by-market strategies to improve attendance will continue on.
‘We know this: We have a great product. We know it’s affordable,’ Brandon said. ‘We’re trying to activate as much as possible in each of these local markets. And we have a great plan, I believe, in place to do that.’
UFL to evaluate start of season date
The UFL has started its season on March 28 in consecutive years. Brandon revealed the league is planning to evaluate whether that rough timeframe — which was established to split the difference between the XFL and USFL start dates following the 2024 merger — works.
‘We’re going to take a look and see what makes sense,’ Brandon said. ‘Not only the player feedback, but our consumer feedback as well.’
The UFL’s current start date forces it to face early season ratings competition from the NCAA Tournament, which could be a part of the reason overall TV viewership for 2025 declined by 20%, per Sports Business Journal.
Brandon didn’t seem overly worried about the state of the league’s TV ratings, referring to them as ‘phenomenal.’
‘People would give their eyeteeth for the amount of eyeballs that are watching our games on TV,’ he said.
UFL training camp length under evaluation
The UFL set its roster size at 64 for the 2025 season after it was 75 for 2024. That roster size reduction also prompted the league to cut training camp from four weeks to three weeks.
Some UFL offenses got off to a slower start in 2025 than the league was hoping, so Johnston explained going back to a four-week training camp model could be in play.
‘Those will be conversations we have with our coaches,’ Johnston detailed. ‘Did that impact you? Do you need more time?’
Johnston also opined one of the reasons some UFL teams struggled out of the gate was because they hadn’t yet found their No. 1 quarterback. He and Brandon pointed to the Houston Roughnecks — who finished 5-5 despite starting the season with a 1-3 record — as one of the prime examples, as their performance improvement coincided with Jalan McClendon’s insertion into the starting quarterback role.
A longer training camp could allow coaches more time to evaluate the position and make the all-important call about a Week 1 starter.
‘You have to have your guy in place Week 1,’ Johnston said. ‘I hope that’s the big lesson that our teams learned this year.’
Could UFL free agency shake up league?
UFL rosters have often been plundered in the offseason as NFL teams swoop in and scoop up some of the league’s top players to give them a shot at making it in the UFL.
However, the league is set to have some of its own players experiencing free agency ahead of the 2026 season, as Johnston explained.
‘We’ve actually got players experiencing free agency this year,’ he said. ‘So, there could be movement with guys being on a team for two consecutive seasons.’
That will create a new challenge for UFL teams in addition to the one posed by the omnipresent threat of losing players to other professional leagues, namely the NFL.
‘How do we create that continuity where we’re able to retain those guys without the other teams coming in and picking some of the higher-profile, more successful players in our league to try to bring them their way?’ Johnston said.
He believes that off-the-field battle for players could create some additional excitement within league circles.
‘I think it’s going to be a fun offseason for us and for our young league to grow and mature.’
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