ESPN is elevating three upcoming XFL telecasts to more traditional networks as viewership continues to hover in the six figures.
ESPN announced Tuesday that two XFL games originally scheduled for FX have been rescheduled for ESPN or ESPN2, and a third game set for ESPN will move up to ABC. The first of those games is Houston-Seattle a week from Thursday, which moves from 9 PM ET on FX to 10:30 PM on ESPN. Seattle-Orlando on March 25 moves from 1:30 on ESPN to 1:00 on ABC. Finally, Houston-D.C. on March 27 moves from FX to ESPN2, with game time remaining at 7 PM ET. [Related: XFL TV schedule.]
The moves come on the heels of a weekend in which FX carried three of four XFL games. Week 3 of the season averaged 571,000 viewers across FX and ESPN2, down 13% from Week 2 on FX, ESPN and ESPN2 (665K). Sunday’s St. Louis-D.C. game was the most-watched of the week with a 0.36 rating and 665,000 viewers on FX, making it the network’s most-watched game this season.
The Orlando-Arlington lead-out ranked second for the week with a 0.33 and 550,000. Rounding out the week, San Antonio-Houston drew a 0.32 and 543,000 on ESPN2 Sunday night and Seattle-Vegas a 0.29 and 528,000 on FX Saturday night.
In week three of the prior XFL, games averaged 2.05, 1.91, 1.47 and 1.00 million viewers on FOX, ABC, ESPN and FS1 respectively. In week three of last year’s USFL, two games on broadcast (FOX) averaged 1.14 million and 825,000 viewers, while a game on cable (USA) chipped in just 292,000. A fourth game aired on Peacock and had no Nielsen data reported.
As previously noted, only two of the 20 games in the prior XFL averaged fewer than one million viewers, compared to nine of the 12 games in the current iteration.
One of the FOX properties that was sold to Disney in 2018, FX has not carried live sports with any regularity since the 2000s, when it aired occasional MLB and NASCAR games.
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 3.7, schedule news from ESPN PR)
