A Morning Consult survey run for Bloomberg in September reported that 46% of adults identify as soccer fans, a 10-point jump from a similar poll conducted right before the World Cup. The comparison covers polls of 2,004 US adults from May 20-22 and 2,001 US adults from Sept. 11-13. That lift pushed soccer past the NHL in fan interest and put it only a little behind college basketball. If this holds, soccer could lock in as the fourth major team sport in the US after football, basketball and baseball.
The momentum cut across generations, including Baby Boomers, but Gen Z moved the most with a 16-point increase. Among Gen Z, 61% call themselves avid or casual soccer fans, trailing only the NBA at 67% and the NFL at 73%. The oldest Gen Zers are in their late 20s.
Still, plenty sat this one out: 38% of adults said they didn't follow the tournament at all. For Boomers, most didn't engage, with a quarter reporting that the World Cup left them far less interested in soccer.
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After the US hosted the 1994 World Cup, Major League Soccer launched two years later with 10 teams, marking the sport's modern era here. Three decades later, MLS has roughly tripled its club count, and this summer's tournament added more fuel. The league says ticket sales and viewership are up since the World Cup, and league plus team accounts pulled in nearly 6 million new social followers.
"The World Cup really serves as a catalyst, bringing it to the forefront of the minds of most Americans," said Camilo Durana, chief business officer for MLS. MLS also says participation in its youth program is up roughly 40% from a year earlier. US audiences hit record highs for World Cup viewing, and more than 62 million viewers watched the final.
Afterward, NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde, whose Telemundo broadcast matches in Spanish, said, "the World Cup didn't create America's soccer audience, it really revealed it." And about half of adults said they plan to watch more soccer because of the World Cup.
Attention is currency. More Americans now call themselves soccer fans, MLS interest is up, social followings climbed by nearly 6 million, and youth participation in MLS programs rose roughly 40% from a year ago. If you track where audiences go, those kinds of shifts can ripple into media rights, sponsorships and day to day spending around the sport.
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