The St. Louis Battlehawks will travel to a few new cities next spring and play in some smaller, more intimate venues as the United Football League announced several franchise relocations and venue changes on Tuesday.
Three of the eight teams in the league will move to new cities, and two more will move to new stadiums within the same metropolitan areas. St. Louis, the league’s lone attendance success story, is one just of three teams staying in the same city and venue.
The three relocated franchises will now play in Columbus (Ohio), Louisville (Kentucky) and Orlando (Florida). Those teams replace Memphis, Michigan and San Antonio (Texas).
The Houston Roughnecks will become the Houston Gamblers and move to that city’s Major League Soccer stadium. The Arlington (Texas) Renegades will become the Dallas Renegades, though they still won’t play in Dallas. They’re moving to the MLS stadium in Frisco, in suburban Dallas.
The move to smaller stadiums is intentional after the team has struggled with attendance in all of its non-St. Louis markets. The three new teams will also play in stadiums built for soccer.
“It’s going to feel real, real different, and it’s going to show better on TV,” said Mike Repole, the league’s newest investor. “The sound is going to be better, and the experience and the engagement is going to be better.”
Repole, a billionaire who made his money in sports beverages, joined the UFL ownership group in July and one of his chief complaints then was the enormous swaths of empty seats and quiet environments at the league’s cavernous venues.