Arena: Soccer's Rise In The U.S.
Md Mahdi-Unsplash
Soccer is the world’s most popular sport by a wide margin. Everyone from Japan to the Middle East love seeing their favorite teams run across the pitch, whether it is Arsenal or their national team. Everyone except Americans. For so long the sport seemed like a foreign language that wasn’t understood, the stepchild that was ignored by the stepparent, that one person who likes pineapple on their pizza. Something about the sport was un-American to multiple generations living in the land of the free. You can’t hit an object with a wooden stick like in baseball or hockey, you can’t use your hands to throw the ball like in basketball, and you can’t hit the daylights out of someone in the same way you can in football or combat sports. Soccer was just different and like with most things that are different, they’re not widely accepted by the masses…at least not at first. For so long soccer trailed behind in popularity to the previously mentioned “American” sports, but something along the way changed. The sport started to garner more attention. More and more people started to play and become fans of European teams. The US’s professional upstart soccer league, MLS, started to become a respectable organization. Now according to a recent study, soccer has become the fourth most popular in the US overtaking ice hockey. What’s led to the increase?
If you’re reading this and played sports from a very young age, chances are that you played organized soccer at some point. It’s easily accessible compared to most other sports and you hardly hear about major injuries while playing, so that takes some worry off your parents’ shoulders. Just like it was then, soccer is a young person's sport, especially among millennials. A study found that people between the ages of 12-24 have soccer as their second favorite sport behind professional football. In 2018-2019 the number of high school soccer players was over 850,000, a record number that’s only increased. It’s very likely that the increased level of interest among a younger generation will continue to the next.
The Latinx population in the US has also influenced soccer’s popularity. The US has seen a cultural diffusion of soccer with the growing number of Latinx immigrants into the US. Most of these immigrants come from Mexico and Latin America where soccer is a main component of their national identity. As of 2019, 60.5 million Latinx reside in the US along with their love of soccer. Every year young Latinx people are playing and introducing their friends to soccer, growing the sport’s popularity even more.
Gabriel C. Perez-KUT
The growth of MLS has also been attributed to soccer’s popularity. Starting from humble beginnings, MLS began play in 1996, two years after the US hosted the FIFA World Cup. It was a small league at first comprising ten teams and lagged behind the top American sports leagues. After its first season, MLS saw a decrease in fan attendance. The decline was fueled by a combination of new innovative rules that many fans did not gravitate toward and the poor performance of the US National Team in tournament play. In its early years it faced massive financial issues, losing more than $300 million between 1996 and 2004. Things looked bleak in 2001 when the league was on the verge of collapse until new investors came into the fold to establish new teams. After that, the league started to find its footing in the US.
More and more expansion teams started to be established, soccer specific stadiums started to be built, and an influx of international stars helped the league become more prominent among sports. MLS went from a ten team league to 28 in 2021 with the addition of Austin FC who made their season debut last year. In the first ten years of existence, most MLS teams played in football arenas like Gillette Stadium. Now most teams have their own home stadiums. Names like David Beckham and Juan Pablo Angel became attached to MLS, increasing the value of the brand and its popularity among the domestic fan base. During the 2021 season, 12.5 million fans attended games while ESPN broadcasts of matches averaged 276,000 viewers. It’s also become a top streaming entity, ranking as the 7th most popular sports league according to a survey by MoffettNathanson.
Soccer in the US is more popular than ever and has a great chance to be a top three sport in the next few years.
