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The eagle has landed: In contrast to the last World Cup in 1994, the USA has long since arrived in world soccer.
Keystone
Starting from almost nothing after the 1994 World Cup, soccer in the USA is now a global economic power and a real spectator magnet. A look at the figures, the stadiums and the history behind a rapid sports revolution.
When the 1994 World Cup took place, there was no functioning professional league in the USA. After the collapse of the legendary North American Soccer League in 1984 (in which Pelé and Beckenbauer once played), there had been no nationwide top professional league in the USA for ten years. When the USA hosted the 1994 World Cup, it was FIFA's condition that such a league be founded. This happened with Major League Soccer (MLS), which was formally launched in 1993, but did not actually start playing until 1996 - with a meagre 10 teams. Today, the MLS has grown to 30 clubs and fills modern stadiums across the country.
For decades, soccer was considered a fringe sport in the USA. However, surveys - including one commissioned by the business magazine "The Economist" - show a historic first: around 10% of Americans now name soccer as their favorite sport. Soccer has thus displaced the traditional American popular sport of baseball (9%) from third place - behind American football and basketball.
In the 1990s, teams had to play in huge, mostly half-empty American football arenas on unsuitable pitches or even artificial football turf. In 1999, Columbus Crew set a milestone with the first stadium designed purely for soccer. Today, almost all MLS teams play in state-of-the-art arenas built specifically for soccer. These stadiums offer a close, European-inspired stadium atmosphere. A decisive factor in why enthusiasm and ticket demand have risen so massively.
While the men's team was in a sporting and financial crisis in the 1990s, the women's national team dominated the world stage. Their historic successes (such as the 1999 home World Cup in front of over 90,000 fans in the stadium) proved to sponsors and TV broadcasters for the first time the gigantic economic potential of "soccer" in the USA - this kept the sponsors for the entire sport in line. The women also triggered an unprecedented youth boom that made soccer the number one family sport. Today, the talent and fan base created at that time feeds not only the extremely booming women's professional league, but also the packed stadiums of the MLS and the professional men's academies.
In 1994, football was played in huge American football arenas in front of often sparse crowds due to a lack of alternatives. Football has since attracted its own crowds: In July 2023, the derby between LA Galaxy and Los Angeles FC at the Rose Bowl broke the all-time record for a regular-season MLS game with 82,110 spectators. The average attendance for the entire league is now stable at over 22,000 per game - a global top 10 figure. Due to the large number of games with 30 teams, the MLS is even in second place worldwide in terms of the total number of spectators per season with over 11 million spectators.
Financially, US football has become completely professionalized. While it still cost around 5 to 10 million dollars to become a team owner in the MLS in the early 2000s, New York City FC broke the 100 million dollar barrier for the first time in 2015. Today, the franchise fee for new teams is several hundred million dollars. The most recent newcomer, San Diego FC, set the current all-time record in 2025 with a franchise fee of 500 million dollars. Top clubs such as Inter Miami or Los Angeles FC now have a market value of over one billion dollars.
Whereas the USA used to have to buy in ageing world stars (such as Lothar Matthäus or later David Beckham) in order to generate attention, today it is a real talent factory. Young US players move to top European clubs in their teens for tens of millions (such as Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie or Folarin Balogun). US football has developed from a completely isolated market with no measurable transfer activity into a global player that handles over 800 international player transfers every year, moving a total volume of almost 400 million dollars in transfer fees.
