By Adam Minter | Updated on Jun 11, 2026 at 11:30 AM
It was easy to imagine a bright future for soccer in America in 1994. The US had just hosted a wildly successful World Cup, its first, and a professional league was on the way to carry the momentum forward. America’s biggest sports, from football to hockey, had all consolidated around a dominant league and a national audience. Why not soccer, too?
Over the next three decades, the sport’s audience grew, participation surged, and soccer cemented its place in American culture. By one recent poll, it now ranks ahead of baseball among sports fans .
But as the US prepares to host its second World Cup alongside Canada and Mexico, soccer has produced a strange outcome. It has become a major American sport without developing around a single organization or audience.
Loyalties are scattered across foreign leagues, national teams and domestic competitions alike. That fracturing might have looked like failure a generation ago. In 2026, it’s what success looks like in a diverse, digital America.
When FIFA awarded the 1994 World Cup to the US, the organization required that US Soccer — the nonprofit governing American soccer from youth leagues to the national teams — launch a new professional league. The directive had a clear purpose. Soccer needed a domestic flagship to convert World Cup enthusiasm into a sustainable fanbase.
Kickoff happened in 1996, and the name of the league — Major League Soccer — spoke to the ambition. Three decades later, MLS is an American sports calendar stalwart.
Thirty teams and a lucrative media rights agreement with Apple are obvious signs of success. But there are others. The league’s opening weekend in February was its biggest ever , highlighted by a staggering 75,673 fans who attended a match featuring Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi and Los Angeles Football Club’s recently signed superstar, Son Heung-min .
Yet for all of its success, MLS commands only a slice of America’s soccer obsession. Commissioner Don Garber revealed that the league’s streamed matches average 120,000 unique viewers. By contrast, England’s Premier League just completed its season, averaging 535,000 US viewers per match , while one estimate places Mexico’s Liga MX’s audience at nearly 700,000 per match, maintaining its longtime status as the most-watched soccer league in the US .
The fragmentation isn’t confined to screens; it’s visible in stadiums, too. For more than a decade , Mexico has routinely outdrawn the US men’s national team on American soil, including at international tournaments such as the 2025 Concacaf Nations League Finals . The dynamic extends beyond Mexico. A recent sold-out US Men’s National Team match against South Korea seemed “like a road game,” according to ESPN . Most of the 26,500 spectators were rooting for South Korea (and Son Heung-min) even though the game was played in New Jersey.
A similar pattern is emerging at the 2026 World Cup. Fans of several national teams — especially those playing in immigrant-heavy hubs such as Miami — have been driven into the resale market due to high demand. In contrast, just days ahead of the tournament, there are plenty of tickets available for the USMNT’s opening match against Paraguay. While Paraguay lacks the large local fan base and star power that have helped drive demand for other visiting teams, the availability of tickets for the host nation’s opening match nonetheless points to relatively muted interest in the USMNT itself.
Viewing the disparity between enthusiasm for the US team and several other visiting teams as a failure assumes that soccer was ever destined to follow the path of more established American leagues in the first place. It wasn’t. Those sports became national institutions during a mid-century media monoculture that favored and rewarded consolidation around a single league.
Soccer’s post-1990s emergence happened under different circumstances. Thanks to cable, satellite and streaming, fans now have access to the global game. The audience is different, too. It’s younger and more diverse than the other established sports leagues, according to polling by Morning Consult .
Empowered by this global access, many of these new fans begin their soccer journey by watching the sport at its highest level — in the Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, or other associations. Soccer’s growth depends on that exposure, but it makes consolidation under one league like MLS far more difficult. MLS — unlike the NBA, for example — is not even close to its sport’s pinnacle, but it must compete for attention against the very best anyway. The USMNT, though spirited and often competitive, faces the same battle for relevance.
Yet the absence of a center — and an elite one, at that — hasn’t prevented soccer from flourishing in the US. Instead, an even more pluralistic sport has emerged. Women’s soccer has developed a thriving ecosystem of its own, including an elite women’s domestic league. Youth soccer spans pay-to-play, rec leagues and immigrant leagues; though not always equitable, there are multiple entry points for participation, and they are growing.
This isn’t the sports landscape older Americans grew up with. There’s no simple hierarchy from the youth level to the pros. Instead, soccer fits the diverse makeup and tastes of a younger generation that expects to choose what they watch, when they watch it, and who they favor.
It’s a reminder that this World Cup showcases a sport that became American on its own terms.
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