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The United Football Players Association has hammered out its first collective bargaining agreement with the UFL, ratifying a two-year pact that includes a pay raise and a health care provision that extends into the offseason.
Per the terms of the CBA, players who participate in all 10 regular-season games in 2025 will see their minimum salary increase from $55,000 to $62,005, while next year’s minimum payout will be set at $64,000. By way of comparison, the minimum salary for a WNBA player with two or fewer years of service is $66,079.
Players will also be eligible for bonuses under the deal, as a new incentive program will give the outstanding performer from each week earn an additional $500 for his efforts, while the league MVP would walk away from the season with an extra $7,500.
In addition to the salary bump, UFL players (and their dependents) now will be eligible for year-round health care under the CBA.
The CBA is pending final approval from the UFL’s board of directors, but once the league signs off on the agreement, it should resolve a complaint the UFPA filed last month with the National Labor Relations Board. Before the season kicked off in March, the UFPA petitioned league co-owner Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to intervene in what was characterized as an “ongoing contract dispute with the UFL.”
The breakthrough comes as the UFL gets set to embark on the fourth week of its second season. While the league’s TV ratings thus far have come up well short of the year-ago deliveries—with an average draw of 559,500 viewers per telecast, the audience for the Week 1 games was down 47% versus the year-ago 1.05 million—the numbers have improved somewhat, as the Week 3 slate marked the strongest turnout of the season thus far. Per Nielsen, the four-game set across Fox, ABC and ESPN averaged 665,750 viewers, good for an 11% lift compared to the prior week’s figure (602,250).
ABC scored the season’s largest UFL deliveries to date on Sunday afternoon, as its broadcast of the D.C. Defenders-St. Louis Battlehawks game averaged 967,000 viewers, with a peak of 1.4 million. St. Louis is by far the most popular UFL team, beating all comers in ratings last season, while also topping this year’s attendance rankings. Through two home game, the Battlehawks are averaging 31,065 spins of the turnstiles, dwarfing the league average of 12,888.
Season-to-date, the UFL is averaging 609,167 viewers per game, down 33% versus the year-ago 911,500.
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