Why the 2026 World Cup may not help American soccer leagues surge

Remember when soccer was touted as the next big sport in the US? 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 one hand, a recent Harris poll found that 72% of Americans are interested in football, up 17% from 2020. A quarter are “dedicated” fans, and one in five say they are “obsessed” with the sport.

On the other hand, there has been a sharp decline in attendance and TV viewership in the country's two top domestic leagues, MLS and NWSL, as well as unimpressive crowd numbers for last summer's FIFA Club World Cup and CONCACAF Gold Cup.

These contrasting findings – a growing fan base while attendance and viewership numbers plummet – come at a major inflection point for soccer in the United States, which is home to its biggest and most ambitious record. The World Cup kicks off at SoFi Stadium. in less than 200 days.

“The short answer is yes, the World Cup will be a watershed moment for soccer in America. But it is unlikely to immediately lead to a significant increase in ticket sales for MLS and NWSL. Soccer fandom in America evolves differently than other sports,” said Darin 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 examine how soccer can become mainstream in the United States.

“The World Cup will bring in millions of new Americans. Over the next few years, we expect these new fans to come through the pipeline, giving soccer a significant 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 allow soccer to reach that critical mass.”

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

“The risk is not that college football will be in the same place in 10 years, but that it will regress,” he said.

“For the World Cup to benefit attendances, ratings and revenues for domestic leagues, and levels of youth and adult participation in football, it must be a catalyst for increased 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 dedicated or obsessive fans. The question is whether it will convince enough wealthy people and companies to risk the money it takes to compete with the top leagues for the best talent.”

The investment could provide a boost to both domestic first-tier leagues, which have seen attendances and television ratings plummet this year. After setting records in 2023 and 2024, average MLS attendance fell 5.4% this season to 21,988 fans per match. According to Soccer America, 19 of the 29 teams playing in 2024 saw their attendance decline; more than half experienced a decrease of 10% or more.

TV audiences also appear to be relatively small, although the fact that Apple TV, the league's main broadcast partner, rarely releases viewership data makes it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. Last month, MLS said its games attracted 3.7 million viewers worldwide per week across all of its streaming and linear platforms, averaging about 246,000 per game over a full weekend. While that's up nearly 29% from last year, the average viewership is about 100,000 fewer than what the league tallied for single games on ESPN alone in 2022, the final season before Apple's 10-year, $2.5 billion bid took effect.

The NWSL also saw overall league attendance decline by more than 5%, with eight of the 13 teams playing in 2024 experiencing declines. TV viewership in the second year of the league's $240 million, four-season broadcast contract fell 8% before the July midseason break, according to Sports Business Journal.

It followed a summer in which the expanded Club World Cup and Gold Cup struggled to find an audience. Although the 63-match Club World Cup averaged 39,547 fans per game, 14 matches were attended by fewer than 20,000 people. The 31-game Gold Cup average was 25,129 – more than 7,000 less than 2023. And five matches attracted less 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 Science of Football” (with Simon Cooper). “Last year was a record year. It's really about reducing the Messi effect.”

“I wouldn't say it's a moment of crisis. And the way MLS is looking at it, I think they're completely focused on the post-World Cup match.” [bump]which they think they will get. I would be skeptical about this myself. I don't think it will do them much good.”

Szymanski said the World Cup could be detrimental to the league because it would highlight the huge difference in the quality of the game between elite international soccer and MLS.

“Americans are not stupid,” he said. “They know what quality sport is. [and] not a quality sport. And they know MLS is low. The only way in a global marketplace to get top talent to create a truly competitive league is to pay them a salary.”

This brings us back to Bank's point that the fix for soccer in the United States has nothing to do with soccer, but with the money spent on the sport. For next summer's World Cup to have a lasting impact, the explosion will need to come not just from increased attendance and TV viewership, but also from investment. And according to Szymanski, it also means more investment in players.

“If all it does is bring attention to these competitions,” Bank said, “I'm not sure they do more than the Olympics every four years, where they temporarily raise the profile of some sports for some people who weren't casual fans before.”