Why the 2026 World Cup might not help increase US soccer championships?

Remember when soccer was touted as the next big sport in the United States? Well, it looks like that moment has finally arrived.

Or not. It all depends on who you ask and how you interpret what they tell you.

On the one hand, there is the recent Harris Poll which found that 72% of Americans admit to an interest in soccer, an increase of 17% from 2020. A quarter of those are “devoted” fans and 1 in 5 say they are “obsessed” with the sport.

On the other hand, there is the stark decline in attendance and TV viewership for the country’s two biggest domestic leagues, MLS and NWSL, and the disappointed fans who showed up last summer for the FIFA Club World Cup and CONCACAF Gold Cup.

These contrasting results – a growing fan base at the same time as attendance and viewing numbers decline – come at an important inflection point for soccer in the United States, with the start of the world’s largest and most ambitious World Cup tournament at Sophie’s Stadium in less than 200 days.

“The short answer is yes, the World Cup will be a watershed moment for soccer in America. However, it is unlikely to immediately lead to a significant increase in ticket sales for Major League Soccer and Major League Soccer. “Soccer fans in America are evolving differently than other sports,” said Darren W. White, executive director of the Sports Industry Program and Center for Sports Analytics at Samford University, which next year will launch a major five-year study to explore how soccer could become mainstream in the United States.

“The FIFA World Cup will bring millions of new Americans into our world. Over the next few years we expect these new fans to come through the pipeline, giving soccer a large enough fan base to tip the scales and help make soccer part of the ongoing mainstream sports conversation. I am confident that the World Cup will enable soccer to reach that critical mass.”

Stephen A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured widely on the economics of soccer, is not optimistic.

“The danger is not that American soccer will still be in the same place in ten years, but that it will decline,” he said.

“For the World Cup to benefit from the attendance, ratings and revenue of local leagues, as well as youth and adult football participation rates, it must be a catalyst for more domestic investment in the game. The question is not whether the World Cup will convince enough people to become fans or move from casual fans to loyal or obsessed fans. It is whether it will convince enough wealthy people and companies to risk the money needed to compete with the major leagues for the best talent.”

The investment could be a huge boost for both top-tier domestic leagues, which have seen their attendance and TV ratings decline significantly this year. After setting records in 2023 and 2024, Major League Soccer saw its average attendance drop 5.4% – to 21,988 fans per game – this season. According to Soccer America, 19 of the 29 teams playing in 2024 saw their attendance decline; More than half saw declines of 10% or more.

The television audience also appears to be relatively small, although Apple TV, the league’s main broadcast partner, rarely releases viewership data, which has hampered efforts to draw any firm conclusions. MLS said last month that its games attract 3.7 million total global viewers weekly on all streaming and linear platforms, averaging about 246,000 games over a full weekend. While that’s about 29% more than last year, the average viewership is about 100,000 fewer than what the league drew for individual games on ESPN alone in 2022, the final season before Apple’s $2.5 billion payout takes effect.

The NFL also saw overall league attendance decline by more than 5%, with eight of the 13 teams playing in 2024 seeing a decline. TV viewership in the second year of the $240 million broadcast deal was down 8% before the midseason break in July, according to Sports Business Journal.

It comes after a summer in which both the Club World Cup and the expanded Gold Cup struggled to find an audience. Although the 63-match Club World Cup attracted an average of 39,547 fans per match, 14 matches saw crowds of less than 20,000. The Gold Cup averaged 25,129 viewers for the 31 matches, a drop of more than 7,000 from 2023. Five matches attracted fewer than 7,800 people.

“There is a danger in taking this year’s decline out of context,” said Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan and the author of several books on football including “Money and Football” and “The Economics of Football” (co-authored with Simon Cooper). “Last year was a record year. It’s really about Messi’s influence diminishing.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a moment of crisis. The way Major League Soccer is looking at this astounds me that they are completely focused on the post-World Cup phase.” [bump]which they think they will get. I’d be skeptical about that. “I don’t think it would do them much good.”

Szymanski said the World Cup could hurt the league by underscoring the huge difference in the quality of play between soccer’s international elite and the American League.

He added: “Americans are not stupid.” “They know what good quality sport is [and] Not a good quality sport. They know that the standard of MLS is low. The only way, in a global market, you can get the best talent for a truly competitive league is by paying salaries.

Which brings us back to Bank’s conclusion that soccer reform in the United States is not about soccer, but about the money spent on the sport. For next summer’s World Cup to have a lasting impact, the “shock” must come not only from increased attendance and television viewing, but also from investment. As Szymanski says, this means additional investment in players as well.

“If all it does is attract attention to this competition, I’m not sure it does any more than the Olympics do every four years when it temporarily raises the profile of some sports for some people who weren’t casual fans before,” Bank said.