The Birmingham Stallions will play the Arlington Renegades in the inaugural game of the United Football League.

The United Football League was created by the merger of the USFL and the XFL for the 2024 spring football season. The Stallions have won the USFL championship the past two seasons, and the Renegades won the XFL crown last season.

They’ll meet when the new league kicks off on March 30.

The announcement was made on FOX Sport’s NFL pregame show on Sunday as the name of the new league was revealed. But no other details – such as the location of the first game or the other teams in the new league – were announced.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the actor and wrestler who was the XFL’s co-owner, said after 30 years of spring football “stopping and starting, stopping and starting,” with the merger, it “feels like we got a shot to establish spring football that is here to stay.”

UFL games will be televised by ABC, ESPN, FOX and FOX Sports 1.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that, in addition to Birmingham, the USFL teams in the United Football League would be the Memphis Showboats and Michigan Panthers, with the XFL providing the DC Defenders, Houston Roughnecks, San Antonio Brahmas and St. Louis Battlehawks along with Arlington.

That would mean the Houston Gamblers, New Jersey Generals, New Orleans Breakers, Philadelphia Stars and Pittsburgh Maulers from the USFL and Orlando Guardians, Seattle Sea Dragons and Vegas Vipers from the XFL didn’t make the cut for the eight-team UFL.

The Washington Post also reported the new league would follow the XFL model that had the teams practicing in the Arlington, Texas, area before playing in home games in the represented cities.

The most recent iteration of the USFL began in 2022 with eight teams, based on the USFL of the 1980s, playing their complete 10-game regular-season schedules in Birmingham, with the league playoffs held in Canton, Ohio.

In its second season in 2023, the USFL remained at eight teams but moved them into four hubs, with the Stallions and Breakers staying in Birmingham, with two teams apiece based in Canton, Detroit and Memphis.

The original XFL appeared for one season in 2001, and the name returned in 2020. But that season was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.

The XFL made another comeback in 2023 with a new concept: The eight teams trained and practiced in Arlington, Texas, but the games were played in a home-and-away format in the eight cities represented by the teams.

The leagues announced in September that they planned to merge. The USFL and XFL announced on Nov. 30 their proposed merger had cleared a federal legal hurdle: “We are pleased to have completed the antitrust review process in connection with the proposed merger of the XFL and USFL and intend to play a combined season this spring kicking off on Saturday, March 30. We are now finalizing terms of the definitive agreement and will share more about this new league in the coming weeks.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.