Will this World Cup finally make soccer mainstream in the U.S.?

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Credit: REUTERS/Albert Gea

With record-setting, NFL-like viewership for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, there is good reason to believe that soccer may finally be entering the mainstream in the United States sports market.

But there is also reason to exercise caution. Are people getting into soccer, or just the World Cup event? If people are really getting into soccer, the MLS seems to have structured its TV deal in a way that makes it nearly impossible for new fans to keep watching.

What is undeniable is that the World Cup is currently blowing away viewership expectations in the United States. Preliminary viewership for the United States’ win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 found that more than 33 million people watched the game in English and Spanish. That number is expected to rise even more when final viewership is released next week.

Since 1987, only one NBA Finals game—Game 6 in 1998—has averaged more viewers than the United States-Bosnia game. Viewership for World Series games is slightly higher, but only two World Series games since 2000—the 2001 Game 7 and 2016 Game 7—have averaged more viewers.

Those comparisons clearly show that the 2026 World Cup has garnered mainstream attention in the United States, but they don’t necessarily mean that soccer, the sport, has entered the mainstream. The 2026 Olympic hockey final, for example, averaged 20.7 million viewers on NBC, Peacock and USA Network this year. That viewership doesn’t dominate the NBA and MLB in the same way as United States-Bosnia does, but is still on par with the average viewership for the five-game 2026 NBA Finals (20.58 million), which was the most-watched NBA Finals on average since 1998.

An argument for why soccer is about to burst into the American mainstream is that, with this match being the most-watched in American history, many people who have never watched soccer before are tuning in to this World Cup. It would be reasonable to expect an even larger viewership number for the United States’ next matchup against Belgium. If even 20% of these new soccer fans continued watching soccer, that could be game-changing for soccer in the United States.

A massive but somewhat smaller audience of new fans likely tuned in to the Olympic hockey final. Did that help change hockey’s place in the American sports space as the clear No. 4 of the big four leagues?

Well, while viewership for the subsequent 2026 NHL Finals was very good — the most-watched since 2019 — it still paled in comparison to the World Series and NBA Finals. The most-watched 2026 Stanley Cup Final game, 5.92 million for Game 6, would be the least-watched World Series or NBA Finals game in modern history for both sports.

Soccer has an even more direct comparison to illustrate this. Prior to the United States-Bosnia game, the most-watched men’s soccer game was the Germany-Argentina final in the 2014 World Cup. Viewership for the MLS Cup rose from 2013 to 2014, but only from an average of 1 million to 1.9 million viewers. The most watched MLS Cup was the inaugural edition in 1996, with 3.1 million viewers.

It would certainly be reasonable to expect some viewership bump for MLS. A quick perusal of social media finds a high number of Americans expressing newfound interest in club soccer. But the most-watched MLS Cup match is still just 3 million viewers, in 1996.

Fox is certainly betting that there will be newfound interest in soccer. When the MLS TV schedule was announced prior to the FIFA World Cup, Fox announced it would air a rare Friday primetime match between Nashville and Atlanta on July 17th. That’s between the World Cup semifinals on the 14th and 15th, and the final on the 19th. Building off that Fox window, LA Galaxy and LAFC will also play on FS1 later on the 17th.

But that will be the last MLS regular-season match to air over-the-air on Fox this year, and likely the last MLS match to air over-the-air until the MLS Cup. After July 17th, only nine MLS matches are scheduled for national television, all on FS1. There is also only one nationally televised match scheduled after September, Portland-Houston on November 1st on FS1.

Note that the MLS-Liga MX Leagues Cup, which will be played from August 4 to September 6, will likely also receive additional nationally televised windows on FS1.

The only other way to watch MLS is with an Apple TV subscription. Unlike the MLB, NHL, and NBA, Major League Soccer does not have any live matches through local club-level television deals because of that contract with Apple. There are other American soccer leagues to watch both locally and nationally, the NWSL and USL being the most prominent, but if you want to keep watching Messi, for example, you will need to have Apple TV.

The international club league of choice for many Americans is the English Premier League. That has a much better television contract in the United States compared to MLS. There will likely be weekly games on NBC and USA Network when the Premier League starts on August 21, and every game streams on Peacock, which is already well known to American sports fans.

Unlike MLS, however, it is much harder to attend a Premier League match in person, as it is “across the pond.” Television is an important element in raising soccer’s prominence in the United States, the focus of this piece, but the in-person experience is important too. Rule changes to MLB, designed to speed up games and make weeknight matchups more appealing to fans, have resulted in increases in attendance and viewership.

That’s why MLS losing local broadcasts, for example, is such a big blow for soccer. If you have an enjoyable in-person experience, especially with a hometown team, you are more likely to want to follow and support that team. But the tough television situation for MLS makes it hard to keep following the league unless you are already paying for or willing to pay for Apple TV.

So, while soccer has certainly made its mark on the United States, its club league, theoretically best positioned to benefit, is not set up to maximize its opportunities. But even if it were, based on historical examples in hockey and soccer, it is still unclear how many people would actually make the leap from watching an international tournament to becoming true soccer fans.

Still, soccer becoming a mainstream sport doesn’t have to happen immediately. If the success of this tournament results only in MLS reassessing its media rights to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, the 2026 World Cup could still be the first step toward soccer becoming mainstream in America.

The post Will this World Cup finally make soccer mainstream in the U.S.? appeared first on Awful Announcing.

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