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The 2026 World Cup has produced some exhilarating games fueled by star power from the likes of Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe. It also brought lots of debate around whether this will be the tournament that results in long-lasting, year-round soccer interest from Americans.
Former longtime U.S. Soccer president Alan Rothenberg tells Front Office Sports the success of this year’s World Cup represents a “rocket launch” for U.S. attention on soccer, which he says will soon be viewed as the country’s No. 2 sport behind football.
Rothenberg played a pivotal role in bringing the World Cup to the U.S. in 1994 as chairman of the organization committee. From 1990 to 1998, he was president of the U.S. Soccer Federation (which is now known as U.S. Soccer), and served as chairman of MLS from 1993 to 1998. He disagrees with critics who say the World Cup is a moment in time that will not lead to sustained interest in soccer from Americans.
“I think this is gonna be another rocket launch,” he tells FOS.
His confidence is shared by Major League Soccer, which on July 13 launched an advertising campaign based around the slogan “Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here.” MLS commissioner Don Garber told FOS this week that “as the water level for the sport grows, we’ve got a lot of boats on it.”
There was similar optimism after the U.S. hosted the 1994 World Cup, though many observers later concluded its impact on soccer’s popularity in the U.S. unfolded much more gradually than the immediate boom many had envisioned.
Rothenberg is realistic. “It won’t be overnight,” he says.
Although soccer is widely considered the most popular sport globally, followed by cricket, Rothenberg isn’t saying American audiences are about to turn their attention away from the NFL, which is far and away the most popular sport in the U.S. He does, however, think soccer will surpass sports like baseball and basketball before long. Rothenberg points to attendance figures, saying that while MLS still lags behind the NFL and MLB in average attendance per game, it has actually outpaced the NBA and NHL in recent years (the latter two leagues still draw more overall attendees due to factors like schedule length and venue capacities).
When it comes to viewership, MLS still trails the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL, though direct comparisons are complicated by its streaming model (MLS struck a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with Apple TV in 2022, and being behind a paywall has impacted viewership). Rothenberg says MLS viewership numbers will likely increase in the future, because there will be greater competition to get MLS after the eye-popping viewership figures for this year’s World Cup.
“I think there’s gonna be greater interest from streaming services, as well as linear broadcasters, to go after soccer,” he says.
Better Infrastructure
The bottom line is that the sport is in a much different place than it was when the 1994 World Cup came to town, according to Rothenberg. Although MLS was first established in 1993, its debut season didn’t take place until 1996. The 1994 World Cup “was a huge boost to get us up to some respectable level,” he says.
Today, there is better infrastructure in place to continue growing the game, according to Rothenberg. He points to MLS Next, which launched in 2020 and is aimed at developing youth soccer players, as well as the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center in Atlanta, which opened in May and has hosted some World Cup matches this summer.
“There’s been steady growth of soccer at all levels, particularly at the MLS level and NWSL level, on an ongoing basis,” Rothenberg tells FOS.
Plus, the U.S. men’s national team captured the attention of millions of Americans despite an ultimately disappointing outcome with its loss to Belgium in the Round of 16. “We saw a glimpse of hope for the future,” Rothenberg says.
Even if the boost is gradual, Rothenberg says this year’s tournament has shown there’s no stopping the growth of soccer in the U.S. He points to the record ratings for the U.S.-Belgium match, which when counting viewers on both Fox and Telemundo totaled a combined average of more than 50 million. That figure beat the average audience of 47.4 million for January’s NFL conference championship games, and underscored the idea of this World Cup being the only thing to truly rival NFL-type audiences.
Rothenberg says “it won’t be long” before people begin viewing soccer as the second-most-popular sport in the U.S. behind football. In fact, Rothenberg says soccer may already be the No. 2 sport in America, “although the public hasn’t really accepted it.”
“I think within a decade, it’s gonna be pretty clear that soccer’s gonna be No. 2,” he tells FOS.
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