How do we drive soccer toward the mainstream? We're not there yet but US Open Cup might provide a path
Soccer isn't as popular as many in the "bubble" think but hope exists
The “no one cares about US Open Cup” crowd has been pretty boisterous on social media, but since launching this site almost 18 months ago, no topic including the Women’s World Cup, USMNT or various European-related things has driven as much conversation & traffic as the US Open Cup. And that included last year’s competition which we covered but not quite as in-depth as we are doing this year.
Open Cup didn’t just fade away as I feared it would
Truthfully, when MLS announced on December 15 they intended to withdraw their first teams from the US Open Cup, I thought it would be a few days of controversy and ultimately they’d get their way and most fans would not care.
I knew I would care, and many in my circle would be upset but figured that was small group. I did not anticipate the longer-term firestorm it created. A firestorm that fueled a pretty robust week of First Round action in mid-March, where social media was ablaze with discussions of matches and USOC goings on. Even many MLS fans who never paid attention to the tournament before their teams entered were watching this past week with a new appreciation for the competition.
I personally traveled the state this week to take in the tournament’s matches in Central Florida. What I found was greater interest than in the past and real hope for the future. US Soccer’s commitment to the tournament which has included more aggressive social media, better wraparound coverage on its website and instant highlight clips has also pushed the momentum.
Yes, this tournament is a niche, as is lower division soccer in general but soccer itself is still a niche sport in this country no matter what its most boisterous backers claim, and honestly I’ve learned the last few years as I escaped a soccer bubble (from 2020 to 2022 I’d say I was out of a soccer “bubble” for the first time since maybe 2005), this sport is a barely a blip in mainstream America. There are many different people who love the sport who are in their own silos thinking no one cares about something or another because they’re in that silo and everyone in that silo is talking about Arsenal or Hany Mukhtar, Sacramento’s efforts to move from USL to MLS or Gio Reyna.
Soccer still hasn’t really made it in this country outside of short events
Truthfully, no matter how much we love soccer/football, their isn’t a concertation of interest in this sport outside of brief periods in the summer - when the Women’s World Cup or Copa America take place and other sports are relatively speaking dead by comparison.
This is part of what bothered me about Leagues Cup last year because it competed directly with Women’s World Cup which is one of the few events that penetrates the US mainstream in terms of this sport. The interest comes and goes. In fact, the number of people watching random US Men’s National Team games are pretty pitiful in the larger scheme of things, unless its in a major tournament or they are facing Mexico. Also the USMNT has a bad knack of playing matches when major college sporting events are on - think March Madness the other day, qualifiers in 2021 that went head-to-head with BIG college football games, etc.
Liga MX remains popular in the US compared to other soccer properties, but we’re seeing some signs of generational drag and more recently its numbers have often slipped on TV below that of the Premier League. Moreover, Liga MX never has broken through with the English language audiences the way I said it would 15 years ago - on that score I was DEAD wrong (I’m sure their is a piece somewhere where I predicted Liga MX would be a mainstream league in the US eventually).
We tend to think of the Premier League as very popular in the US - sure it’s popular compared to other soccer leagues, drawing an average TV audience significantly higher than other European leagues, MLS, USL or NWSL. As I mentioned it might be now even more popular than Liga MX (this is highly-debatable and the two fan bases are almost entirely separate and distinct).
But Premier League numbers remain generally poor in the larger scheme of things compared to other sports, even golf and auto racing. Premier League boosters are vocally boisterous sort of like SEC College Football fans, and in my opinion are disproportionally represented in the media because the demographics watching the league skew richer and whiter (not just the soccer media, but the broader US sports media in general).
I don’t doubt advertisers and sponsors make decisions on funding based as much on the demographics of those watching a product than raw numbers, but don’t let the former fool us into believing the Premier League numbers in terms of actual market penetration is massive. It’s not. Period. It’s better than the rest of soccer but not relative to other big sport properties in the US.
How to reach a critical mass and make soccer a year-round player in the sports landscape
About 15 years ago, a smart and savvy soccer writer named Jaime Trecker then of FOX Sports but a legend in his own right like his father was, told me something directly. Trecker said to me the US Men’s and Women’s National Team CANNOT be the driver of mass fandom in this country because they don’t play often enough or compete in serious tournaments more than once a year or two if even that. Besides he thought the USMNT fan base was polarizing and didn’t watch much soccer outside of the national team (I didn’t see it that way at the time but wow was he spot on about the fan base long-term).
Trecker told me it has to be the club game, and while it might be the European club game that stimulates interest, domestically the club game needs to be organized in a manner fans that like college sports AND European football can understand and recognize.
Otherwise reaching anything approaching critical mass to where the game overtakes the country, and sponsorship sales as well as media deals are robust is unlikely. I had reached the same determination about the National Teams by that point in terms of lack of interest outside big tournaments (my wake up call was the Confederations Cup , but was still very high on the idea of MLS moving the needle and thinking the Premier League ultimately would rival US-based sports leagues in interest. MLS and the Prem have most certainly grown since then and USL has a greater footprint than that era USL and then NASL 2.0 ever had, but still it’s nowhere near good enough.
How to breakthrough? US Open Cup and linked leagues
In my opinion if Soccer is ever going to REALLY breakthrough in this country it has to do so outside ethnic hamlets and rich suburbs where people have lots of disposable income to travel and buy every streaming service under the sun that shows games In order to do that its going to have to be through a competition like Open Cup which links small towns and local communities to city neighborhood and suburbs in a March Madness-like format. Or through a league system like USL linking their leagues together on both the men’s and women’s side, because they cover such a large swath of the country between all their divisions. Make no mistake about it, USL wants to do this, but you can’t just wave a magic wand and tell investors who invested in something not based on this principle to reorganize - so it’s a long process but I hope USL will get there.
Ultimately MLS might get there too with MLS Next, MLS Next Pro, a potential D2 league and its top league. But they’re further off and are missing the critical women’s piece (which USL has) and adult-amateur piece (where USL really thrives) which we see in places like Lubbock, Little Rock, Burlington and Annapolis drives new fans to embrace soccer in very big numbers - thanks to US Open Cup and summer leagues.
The beauty of college sports in the US and why they are so popular and successful is that they link the small towns of this county with its very traditional values and community-focus to big cities with people who are graduates of schools or have some other connection to a university. While MLS, USL and NWSL have all tried to become really relevant nationally (And USL has a footprint that takes its teams into about half the population of the country which believe it or not is more than MLS) I sense the community piece is missing without Open Cup.
One of the wonderful things about Open Cup in the last few years is the regional pairing has been able to foster and stimulate local derbies between clubs that don’t face each other regularly because of our broken league system.
Soccer has to be relevant locally to be relevant nationally, and this sport still has not achieved the critical mass of relevance in many of the local communities that have professional clubs to be as strong as it can be. US Open Cup. for all its flaws as well as the growing league footprint both women’s & men’s are the keys to broadening the support for the sport, making it more year-round and ultimately breaking into the mainstream.
That’s my take. Feel free to disagree.
You are absolutely right in this post. When people keep telling me how popular Arsenal or Manchester City is and I tell them as many people are watching cornhole or women’s basketball they get upset.
Then you talk about the other leagues there were more people watching crime dramas at 3 AM matches from Italy or Germany. Even with Puli there.
MLS numbers stink and we all know that not that many people are actually watching on Apple - they don’t have that many subscribers in the US .
I would argue part of it is the national teams bad numbers is because the USSF has turned off fans through the years with their governance of the pro game favoring MLS + NWSL.
You are correct with open cup, but it will never be what you wanted it to be unless they’re significant investment not only from the Federation but from MLS because they have all the money. And kill the competition, because it represents a major threat to them in terms of popularity of teams outside of MLS pyramid
There should be mention of how soccer in the U.S. has been embraced by the youth and young adults --and even the LGBTQ community-- more so than hockey or even MLB. I believe a Latino growing up in the U.S. in the footprint of a MLS or USL team will ultimately have more loyalty to that team than any Liga MX team his/her parents or grandparents supported. The infamous homophobia showed in Mexican matches is also a major turn off from Liga MX. Last but not least, the economic valuations of Liga MX teams are just pitiful, compared to MLS, NWSL, or USL clubs. Stars like Messi and Suarez coming to the MLS and USL increasingly reaping large transfer fees to MLS or Europe. All these factors together indicate a brighter future for the MLS and USL than Liga MX. p.s. USMNT 2:0 vs Mexico tonight in the CONCACAF Finals!