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Attendance and television ratings figures say so, and sources add that ticket sales for Sunday’s playoff game in St. Louis aren’t exactly robust.

Nonetheless, the St. Louis entry in the United Football League remains the dominant leader in turnout for home games and continues to be strong in attracting television viewers, although not nearly as powerful as in the past.

The Battlehawks are in the UFL playoffs for the second year in a row, set to entertain DC on Sunday in a semifinal contest, after leading their league in attendance — as they have for all four seasons in which they have existed across two spring football leagues.

But this year, for the first time, they weren’t No. 1 among teams in their league in television ratings, being nipped by Birmingham — although it is a tie when the numbers are rounded.

In the stadium

The Battlehawks’ average home attendance dipped 14%, from 34,365 last year to 29,537 this season, although there is a caveat. The team had six games in the Dome at America’s Center this time, one more than last year, because San Antonio had a scheduling conflict in its stadium.

The extra contest in St. Louis was not part of the Battlehawks’ season-ticket package but still drew an announced crowd of 27,890 on a Friday night when the Cardinals were at home, with an announced attendance of 34,214. Although it was the B-hawks’ second-lowest attended game of the regular season, it drew in excess of 10,000 more fans than any other UFL team did for any contest.

Still, St. Louis led the UFL in attendance by a wide margin — as it has done with whichever spring league it has been in (the XFL in 2020 and 2023). The 29,537 average this season was 56% higher than the runner-up, DC (13,026). The Battlehawks were 59% above the league average.

If you exclude St. Louis, the league’s seven other teams averaged 9,160. So the Battlehawks were a whopping 69% better than that.

Taking it a step deeper: The B-hawks’ smallest crowd, 26,684, was more than Memphis drew for its five home games combined (19,958) and just a tad under what Houston pulled in for the season (28,762).

Not surprisingly, league CEO and President Russ Brandon called the Battlehawks “a flagship (team) for us.�

However, it is evident that ticket sales for Sunday’s playoff game have been slow compared to the regular season, and some fans could be taking it for granted that a big crowd will attend. To that end, a look at Ticketmaster’s website on Wednesday afternoon showed that there were in many of the Dome’s prime sections.

The league has taken notice.

“We’re trying to find new ways to engage the fan base,� Brandon said. “It’s not a concern, but we’re always looking to improve and find new ‘activation’ to get people involved.

“We’re trying to push real hard ... trying to find ways to get people excited to come out and root. This is going to be a tremendous game, we want to pack the Dome.�

Although that seems unlikely, Brandon remains bullish on his league’s marquee market — which has been awarded the UFL championship game for the second year in a row. The Battlehawks-DC winner will take on the victory of Sunday’s Michigan-Birmingham matchup. The title contest in the Dome is set for 7 p.m. June 14.

TV turndown

The Battlehawks’ local television rating was the lowest in the club’s four-season history, as viewership-tracking firm Nielsen reports that an average of 2.7% of the market tuned in to the team’s 10 games. That’s the rounded-up number from the “official� 2.67 figure from viewership-tracking firm Nielsen, a smidge under the 2.7 rating on the nose that Birmingham, Alabama, drew for the Stallions’ 10 contests.

The B-hawks’ St. Louis TV rating has declined in each season following the 6.7 figure they averaged in their inaugural campaign — the coronavirus-stopped 2020 season that was canceled after five games when they were in the XFL.

They had the two worst-rated games locally in their history this season, both on ESPN. Nielsen says 1.3% of the market tuned in for the contest at home against Michigan on April 26, which was before a 1.0 rating for the B-hawks outing in Memphis on May 11. The previous low was 2.0, set last season.

Nonetheless, St. Louis and Birmingham far outdistanced the six other UFL cities in TV viewership for the local team. Among the rest, only Detroit (home of the Michigan team) averaged more than 1% of the market watching. And that team barely eclipsed that figure, at 1.1. The best-rated game in St. Louis and Birmingham drew 4.2% of those markets. No other UFL team did better than 1.4%.

The big picture

Across the league, television viewership for Year 2 of the UFL was down significantly. And while attendance also declined, it was not as severe as the TV fall.

The league averaged 645,000 viewers across Fox, ABC, ESPN, FS1 and ESPN2, a 20.5% slide from the 812,000 it attracted for the regular season last year.

But Brandon said that the league had five games that peaked at more than a million viewers and that the UFL faced an unusual amount of competition for viewers this year. Included were a Boston-New York NBA playoff series and Rory McIlroy’s dramatic playoff victory in the Masters.

“We feel very good where we sit in the marketplace,� Brandon said. “Most of these are well-established properties� that compete for viewers, such as the NBA, NHL, MLB, soccer, golf and auto racing. “To go head-to-head against them and to do as well as we have is something we can build off of.�

At the turnstiles, the eight UFL teams drew an average of 12,168 fans, a 5.1% drop from 12,817 last year. Memphis was the laggard, down to 3,992 this year from 6,894 last season — a 42.1% drop.

Spring football has a checkered history, but it comes at a time of year when TV has a programming need after the end of the college and pro football seasons and with college basketball being mostly over other than postseason tournaments. And despite the viewership decline this year, the figure was 3% better than two spring leagues (UFL, XFL) drew in 2023 — the season before they merged.

Brandon, a former longtime Buffalo Bills executive who for a time was the NFL team’s president and CEO, said that despite the attendance and television viewership downturns the UFL is “very strong. We have committed ownership (Fox, Redbird Capital, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Dany Garcia). This is just the end of Year 2. ... We feel very good about what we’re building, but we also know we have to build in increments. This is a marathon, it’s not a sprint.

“I sat in the NFL for a long time and saw these leagues come and go like the wind and we’re very proud of what we’re building.�

Sunday showdown

The league semifinals are set for Sunday, with Michigan at Birmingham at 2 p.m. on ABC (KDNL, Channel 30 locally). The Battlehawks then entertain DC at 5 p.m. on Fox (KTVI, Channel 2).

Fox plans to use a lot of high-tech elements on its telecast, including cameras on drones, players and on-field officials. A dozen players are to wear microphones. More cameras will be used than in the regular season.

Tornado relief telethon

FanDuel Sports Network is planning to use its telecast of the Cardinals-Los Angeles Dodgers game Friday night as a fundraiser to benefit the recovery efforts for those impacted by the tornado that tore through parts of St. Louis on May 16.

All of the city’s major sports teams are providing items to be auctioned on the telecast, which will be carried over-the-air on KMOV (Channel 4) and Matrix Midwest (Channel 32) plus more broadcast stations throughout the Midwest in addition to cable’s FanDuel outlet.

on the telecast, which starts at 7:15 p.m., are meet and greets with Cardinals players, Battlehawks tickets and pregame field access, dinner for 10 in the City SC owners’ box, plus all-inclusive tickets to a Blues game including bench access during warmups.