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The XFL had its first Thursday Night Football Game in Week 2 of the ongoing season, where the Seattle Sea Dragons hosted the St. Louis Battlehawks. It ended in a victory for the Battlehawks, who beat the Sea Dragons 20-18 with a walk-off 44-yard field goal. That saw St. Louis go 2-0 for the season, while Seattle slipped to 0-2.
On another front, though, there was better news for the Seattle Sea Dragons. Despite being a Thursday and the team playing in an existing NFL market in the same stadium as the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, the Sea Dragons saw more than 10,000 fans come to watch the game. The attendance figure was reported as 10,386.
Does turnout for Seattle Sea Dragons portend well for XFL's future?
Many leagues have tried to take on the behemoth that's the NFL. From USFL to UFL to XFL, all of them have tried and failed. This is the third iteration of the XFL. After Vince McMahon failed to save the league from bankruptcy after 2020, Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia rescued it to begin its third installment.
They have a lucrative TV contract in place and are playing at a time when the NFL is off. However, interest in the league will be gauged from how many fans walk in through the stadium gates. While nobody is comparing it to the NFL yet, having over 10,000 fans on a Thursday is not shoddy.
However, on the opening weekend, they had more than 12,000 fans in each of the games played. While playing on a weekday might have dampened the numbers, it was still lower than the opening night's, and this weekend in Week 2 will show a better marker for where the league stands. It's currently drawing fewer fans than it did in its previous editions before it went bankrupt, which is concerning.
That's a reason to worry for the promoters. However, they have made a more for-TV product with exciting rule changes and direct access to the sidelines and coaching boxes. The refereeing and review method is also more audible on television, which provides an inside look into the functioning of the game.
The Seattle Sea Dragons and the St. Louis Battlehawks played an exciting game culminating in a comeback win that went down to the wire. The XFL will hope that fans who came to see it relay the excitement of the league to others so that fan numbers climb up to where the organizers would want it to be.
