The league wants to have 10 teams in 2028.
In a perfect world, the co-owner of the United Football League, Mike Repole, wants a 16-team circuit. The league presently has eight teams and it remains to be seen how many of those teams will remain in their markets after the 2026 season. Repole seems to be the dominant force in the UFL’s business and he pushed for a change in a number of markets dropping franchises in Detroit, Memphis and San Antonio and putting teams in smaller cities with smaller stadiums such as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville and Orlando although it should be noted that Columbus and Orlando are big league markets. The UFL will be putting a team in Oklahoma City in 2028 when that city’s new soccer facility opens. There will be a tenth team as well in 2028. So far, in 2026, not many people are paying to see UFL games particularly in the Dallas and Houston markets.
Rapole wants a 16-team league by the 2035 season and maybe as many as 32 teams sometime in the distant future. Rapole is the latest individual who is spending money on a business that has not worked. Spring professional football. The landscape is littered with spring football league failures, the United States Football League which operated between 1983 and 1985 being the best example of failure, there were other leagues that failed to get off the ground and somehow another United Football League seemed to meander to a slow death between 2009 and 2012. The Alliance of American Football didn’t last a season in 2019, Vince McMahon’s attempt at establishing the XFL in 2001 and in 2020 lasted a year. A new United States Football League and a third XFL merged after the 2023 season to form the United Football League. Spring football can’t compete with other sports in the entertainment space and that is Rapole’s problem.
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