XFL Ratings Slip In Second Week, Attendance Rises

The ratings for the XFL took an expected drop in its second weekend, while attendance was up a bit from last week. While the official Nielsen numbers aren’t yet in, the Washington Post’s Jake Russell reports that the Saturday game between the DC Defenders and New York Guardians scored 2.127 million viewers on ABC, down 36% from the 3.3 million for last week’s Saturday ABC game.

That number was largely expected, as the first weekend drew a lot of curious one-time viewers like most television debuts. ABC’s Sunday game between the Dallas Renegades and L.A. Wildcats had 2.397 million viewers. While that’s down a mere 4% from Sunday’s 2.495 million, it must be said that last week’s game aired on ESPN which has a much lower market penetration than ABC. The demo ratings are not yet available, nor were any numbers for the XFL on FOX games.

By comparison, the Alliance of American Football was down 65% in its second weekend. Again, there is a caveat here; the AAF’s second weekend games aired on TNT and the NFL Network, not a national broadcast television network, while the first weekend games were on CBS.

Meanwhile, 247 Sports reports the following attendance numbers for weekend two:

Tampa Bay Vipers at Seattle Dragons: 29,172
New York Guardians at DC Defenders: 15,031
Dallas Renegades at L.A. Wildcats: 14,997
St. Louis Battlehawks at Houston Roughnecks: 17,103

The Vipers vs. Dragons game topped all week one attendance numbers. That game pushed overall attendance up from week one to 76,285, which had a total combined attendance out of four games of 69,818.