News: Recent polls and stats on soccer popularity in the USA

It was always quite popular. In the winter it was either wrestling or basketball.
The fall options were soccer, football. Can't remember if golf was fall or spring, I think fall.
Spring was baseball, track and field, tennis

This was in a typical midwest town

 

There's a huge lack of rugby coaching expertise in the US and rugby would occupy the same space, facilities and even players as American football. 8- or 6-player American football fills the gap for smaller schools. My guess is rugby is mostly played at private schools that don't have football teams. (Of course, that's where lacrosse was a generation ago).

 

It's a complicated sport. I played fire several years at school and still didn't understand all the rules. Rugby league (see NRL) is a lot simpler.

 

Rugby's purely a club sport here, but I think, unlike lacrosse, Rugby has a chance at nationwide relevance. Rugby doesn't have a huge number of professional teams worldwide, and salaries aren't insane, which has allowed MLR to poach some decent late-career foreign talent. Lots of fairly large colleges around the country have rugby programs, and it's not just Cal that has a D1 rugby program nowadays.

I think most Americans would like the sport if broadcasters could get Sevens (quick games of pure action) and Six Nations (some of the best rugby, with good matchups most weeks) showing here regularly.

 

A lot of people live in the Northeast and Midwest of our country.

 

I find it difficult to believe that Lacrosse isn't at least in the top 10 most popular sports for girls. Boys I can understand as it is still largely viewed as a prep school sport in the NE, despite it's strides in the past couple of decades. It's also very expensive, which is a barrier to entry.

 

I blame John Irving. All of his books seem to include wrestling.

 

Can't speak for every state, but golf is a fall sport in Ohio.

 

MLS-level payrolls would be enough for an American circuit in rugby union to snap up all of the world's best players.

 

High School Football is completely embedded within American Culture. I have seen reports of schools dropping it and numbers being lower but this is coming from such a high place it's going to be a while before we see any noticeable difference. If we ever do.

Rugby has a similar injury risk but doesn't have the cultural position so it makes sense that schools would be reluctant to start programs that would have a decent amount of liability. No principal is going to be fired for not starting a Rugby program. There are a lot of areas of the country where you would be fired for trying to cancel the football program.

 

France is the exception. Toulouse has a €13.5 million budget. The salary cap is €10 million with French internationals being their DP equivalents.

 

This is almost two years old now.

Soccer at 8% among 18-29 year-olds.

Soccer never scored higher than 2% in Gallup polls between 1937 and 2004.

 

ProRel can fix this.


On a serious note, this is why USMNT/MLS/USL struggle for viewership. In USMNT case even for attendance. EPL and Liga MX might be more popular than MLS but they don't come close in interest either to our other most popular sports.

 

I'm not sure that EPL and Liga MX are more popular that MLS. I think it's probably evenly split. As we've found over the last few years those EPL and Liga MX fans follow a handful of teams, whereas the MLS fan base is split across 30 teams.

If MLS can get 2% of the sports fanbase it'll do just fine.

 

The trend per that image is

football is decreasing
baseball is decreasing

basketball is increasing
soccer is increasing
hockey is increasing

 

Champions League ratings:

Per CBS, the Champions League final between PSG and Arsenal was the "most-watched club soccer match in U.S. English-language TV history" with average of 3.087 million viewers, up 51% over 2025. Peaked in shootout at 3.926 million. Streaming data not disclosed.

— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) June 2, 2026

 

Doesn't include Telemundo, which is where I watched it.

 

US-Paraguay was the most watched soccer broadcast in US history:

With 27.537 million viewers combined across Fox and Telemundo, the #USMNT vs. Paraguay game sets a new record as the most-watched soccer broadcast in U.S. history:https://t.co/ri53U6TxGt via @phillysport @PhillyInquirer

— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) June 17, 2026

27.537 million viewers combined across Fox and Telemundo

 

I think this was revised upward to ~30M after all the smaller market data came in.

 

Has MLS been doing any promotion to take advantage of this?

 

Any ideas guys?

The calendar is undefeated. No outfield player has ever defined a
World Cup at 39, and Argentina will have to ration his minutes
whether they like it or not.
https://wcup-spot.com/messi-world-cup-record-why-it-wont-happen

 

We've seen him play 90 minutes week in, week out in MLS with thousands of miles of travel in-between. He demands to be on the pitch. He didn't look too happy about being subbed with 20 minutes to go and he could have scored 6 on a better day.

 

Are you saying that to be cute because Milla was 38 when he defined the cup in '90?
What does rationing Messi's minutes actually mean, btw? He looks incredibly sharp and fit. So, 70 minutes of Messi or 90 minutes of anyone else, and who choses against him?
I do agree, he should not be this good at 38, but HFC he was good in that first one.

 

People think Messi does it week in, week out in MLS because it's a weaker league.

But Copa America and now the first game in the World Cup have proven otherwise.

Argentina had 10 shots, Messi had 6 of them.
Argentina had 6 shots on target, Messi had 4 of them.
He had the longest carry at 38 yards, the most touches in the box, a goal disallowed and two near misses.