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- Starting next spring, the United Football League will call Louisville home.
- The Louisville Kings will play at Lynn Family Stadium, which houses Louisville City FC and Racing Louisville FC.
- The news comes roughly three months after billionaire entrepreneur Mike Repole was named the leader of the UFL’s business operations.
The United Football League is coming to Louisville.
Starting next spring, the Louisville Kings will call Lynn Family Stadium home, the UFL announced Tuesday morning. A head coach will be named “in the near future,” the league said in a news release.
Louisville is one of three new UFL markets; the others are Columbus, Ohio, and Orlando, Florida. The trio is replacing the Memphis Showboats, the Michigan Panthers and the San Antonio Brahmas in the eight-team league.
This news comes roughly three months after a familiar face joined the UFL’s ownership group as the leader of its business operations: billionaire entrepreneur Mike Repole, whose Repole Stable has produced Kentucky Derby favorites such as Uncle Mo, Forte and Fierceness. The New York native said his background in the sport of kings inspired the Louisville franchise’s nickname.
“I’ve always thought that this was a great market for a pro team,” Repole told The Courier Journal. “My experience of being in Kentucky for the last 20 years definitely swayed me to look at it as a market; and the more I researched the more it made sense.”
The UFL is entering its third season. It debuted in 2024, when the United States Football League merged with the XFL. The 2025 campaign kicked off March 28 and ended June 14. The DC Defenders defeated the Michigan Panthers in the championship game, 58-34.
Here’s a rundown of the UFL markets heading into the 2026 season, which begins March 27:
Note: All eight teams will use the league’s headquarters in Arlington, Texas, as their training grounds. Repole said teams could spend up to 10 days in their respective markets during stretches of back-to-back home games.
- Birmingham Stallions (Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Alabama)
- Columbus Aviators (Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio)
- Dallas Renegades (Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas)
- DC Defenders (Audi Field in Washington, D.C.)
- Houston Gamblers (Shell Energy Stadium in Houston)
- Louisville Kings (Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville, Kentucky)
- Orlando Storm (Inter&Co Stadium in Orlando, Florida)
- St. Louis Battlehawks (The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis)
The UFL on Tuesday said its complete 2026 schedule will be released “at a later date.” The top four teams in the regular-season standings will advance to the playoffs.
From an optics standpoint, the UFL experienced a sophomore slump in 2025. Average TV viewership was down 20% (from 812,000 to 645,000), and average attendance was down 5% (from 12,827 to 12,162), according to a report from Sports Business Journal. Four franchises drew fewer than 10,000 fans per game: Dallas, Birmingham, Houston and Memphis.
Located in Butchertown, Lynn Family Stadium is the home of Louisville’s professional men’s and women’s soccer teams, Louisville City FC and Racing Louisville FC. The 5-year-old stadium has 11,600 seats and a capacity of 15,304 — right in Repole’s wheelhouse.
“If Lynn Family Stadium wasn’t available,” he said, “we wouldn’t be in the market.”
How do UFL rules differ from NFL rules? Here’s a look at some noteworthy changes:
- The play clock is 35 seconds — not 40 seconds.
- Until the final two minutes of each half, the game clock doesn’t stop for incomplete passes or ball carriers running out of bounds.
- Kicking extra points is a no-go. Instead, teams can elect to go for one, two or three points after a touchdown. To do so, they must reach the end zone again from the 2-yard line, the 5-yard line or the 10-yard line, respectively.
- Teams are permitted to throw two forward passes on one play, but the first pass must be completed behind the line of scrimmage.
- There are no onside kicks. To maintain possession after a touchdown, teams must convert a fourth-and-12 from their own 28-yard line.
- Overtime is a best-of-three series of alternating attempts to score from the 5-yard line — no field goals allowed.
This isn’t Louisville’s first brush with pro football. The Louisville Breckenridges and the Louisville Colonels competed in the NFL during the early 1920s.
More recently, the city was home to the Louisville Fire — a member of the Arena Football League’s developmental league, AF2, from 2001-08. Its first head coach was Jeff Brohm, an NFL and XFL veteran who’s in his third season at the helm of the Cardinals. Then, there was the Louisville Xtreme, which bounced around multiple leagues from 2013-21.
There were at least six players on UFL rosters in 2025 with ties to Louisville: Qwynnterrio Cole (St. Louis Battlehawks), Cole Hikutini (Michigan Panthers), Aidan Robbins (San Antonio Brahmas), Momo Sanogo (DC Defenders), Cole Spencer (St. Louis Battlehawks) and Willie Tyler (San Antonio Brahmas).
A date for the 2025 UFL Draft has not yet been set. Last year, teams selected the rights to 10 players.
Repole told The Courier Journal he hopes to have “a bunch of local and regional heroes” on the Kings’ roster. Ideally, he said, those players will use the franchise as a springboard to the NFL.
“To me, this is a developmental league that’s going to be really incredible quality,” he said. “If your goal is to make the NFL, this league is for you. If your goal is just to collect a paycheck for 12 weeks, then you need to go work somewhere else.”
This story will be updated.
Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brooks Holton at [email protected] and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.
