US Soccer Growth Since 1994 Spurs Economic Shift

Context

The 1994 FIFA World Cup was held in the United States 32 years ago; it remains an inflection point for the sport’s commercial path in this market. According to FIFA match records, the 1994 tournament registered an average attendance of 68,991 per match (FIFA, 1994), the highest in the competition’s modern era, putting professional soccer briefly into a mainstream U.S. sporting conversation. Since then, the landscape has evolved from episodic spikes in interest tied to World Cups to a continuous commercial footprint: Major League Soccer (MLS) expanded to 30 teams by 2023 (MLS, 2023) and stadium infrastructure and broadcast arrangements have matured accordingly. This piece examines the quantitative trajectory of U.S. soccer since 1994 and the market vectors institutional investors should track ahead of, during, and after World Cup 2026.

The expansion in clubs, venues and broadcast windows is not merely cosmetic. Revenue pools that were once narrowly tied to matchday receipts have diversified into domestic broadcast rights, international media sales, sponsorship and commercial activations. For context, the U.S. television audience for the 2019 Women’s World Cup final averaged 11.4 million viewers on English-language television (Nielsen/Fox, 2019), demonstrating the scale of audience that can be captured beyond men’s tournaments and underlining the commercial opportunity for rights-holders. That changing consumption dynamic—bigger, more reliable TV audiences and growing digital engagement—has shifted how rights are valued and how clubs and leagues negotiate commercial deals.

Policy, demographic and youth participation trends underpin the commercial story. Youth soccer participation rates and youth club systems matured across the 1990s and 2000s, creating deeper domestic talent pipelines and fan communities. The U.S. Soccer Federation and MLS have pushed strategic investments into academies and community programs since the late 1990s, broadening the sport’s base across suburban and metropolitan markets. Those structural changes support a longer-term monetization runway beyond cyclical World Cup-driven peaks in interest.

Finally, the 2026 World Cup—hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico—will function as a further amplifier of existing trends rather than a stand-alone catalyst. With multiple U.S. cities hosting matches, the event creates concentrated near-term revenue and attention flows for local governments, hospitality sectors, broadcasters and sponsors. Institutional investors should view 2026 in the context of multi-decade secular growth in U.S. soccer rather than an isolated demand shock.

Data Deep Dive

Attendance and fan engagement metrics illustrate the maturation of the market. The 1994 World Cup’s average match attendance of 68,991 (FIFA, 1994) remains a benchmark for live demand for marquee events. By contrast, MLS’s league-wide average attendance in recent seasons has stabilized around c.21,000 spectators per match (MLS, 2023 attendance report), reflecting sustained but more distributed regular-season demand across multiple markets rather than concentrated mega-event spikes. Stadium utilization and the proliferation of soccer-specific venues—dozens built or renovated since 1996—have converted episodic curiosity into repeatable matchday revenue and premium hospitality sales.

Broadcast audience data show a parallel evolution. The 2019 Women’s World Cup final reached 11.4 million average viewers on English-language TV in the U.S. (Nielsen/Fox, 2019), while marquee MLS matches and select U.S. men’s national-team fixtures have attracted mid-to-high single-digit millions on combined linear and streaming platforms in recent cycles. Rights valuations reflect this: U.S. domestic and international rights fees for soccer properties have grown materially, with multi-year deals being signed across linear and digital platforms. That shift has implications for broadcast companies and digital-native distributors as they structure carriage and sublicensing arrangements.

Franchise and club valuations have risen in step with revenue diversification. While historical average franchise valuations were modest in the early 2000s, the entry prices and reported valuations for MLS expansion franchises in the 2010s and early 2020s ranged from the low hundreds of millions to reported headline prices above $300m for newer entrants, underscoring investor willingness to pay for market access and stadium-linked commercial upside (Forbes/MLS franchise reports, various years). These valuations are also a function of ancillary real-estate development, sponsorship frameworks and local corporate partnerships that generate recurring cash flows beyond ticketing.

Sponsorship and apparel are other material components. Global sportswear companies that use the U.S. soccer market as an activation platform—principally NKE (Nike) and, to a lesser extent, ADDITIONAL BRANDS—report integrated marketing spend tied to both club and national-team campaigns. These companies’ exposure to soccer-driven sales, particularly around World Cups and major tournaments, is quantifiable in seasonal uplift to apparel sales in U.S. and global markets, and in marketing spend allocations each four-year cycle.

Sector Implications

Broadcast and media companies are primary direct beneficiaries of the maturation of U.S. soccer. Concentrated live event audiences remain the most valuable inventory for advertisers; as viewership fragments across platforms, live sports like soccer retain pricing power for ad slots. Comcast (CMCSA) and Disney (DIS) are incumbents in the rights landscape—either directly or through network partners—and changes in soccer consumption will affect their subscriber and ad revenue mix. Digital platforms and streaming aggregators are also critical; their ability to bundle soccer content with complementary programming will influence subscriber retention metrics and ARPU (average revenue per user) calculations.

Apparel and consumer goods firms have structural upside but uneven exposure. Nike (NKE) historically captures the lion’s share of national-team and many club kit deals in the U.S. market; apparel royalty flows scale with tournament viewership and merchandising penetration. That said, revenue from kit sales is lumpy and tied to championship cycles and star-player-driven demand spikes. Hospitality and real estate groups linked to stadium development and matchday experiences benefit from recurring cash flows; public and quasi-public REITs that operate large venues may see incremental revenue through premium seating and event hosting, though those are geographically concentrated.

Betting operators and gaming companies stand to gain from sustained increases in match volume and the proliferation of in-play wagering products. DraftKings (DKNG) and FanDuel (private/Flutter) have already aligned commercial strategies with soccer’s growing seasonality in the U.S. market. Incremental match inventory—MLS regular-season games, cup competitions, and national-team friendlies—translates into more wagering events and potentially higher customer engagement rates, which feed through to GGR (gross gaming revenue) metrics.

From a macro perspective, local government revenues tied to hospitality, tourism and sales taxes are materially affected by concentrated tournament activity. Host cities for World Cup matches can expect temporary but significant boosts in hotel occupancy, F&B sales and transport usage; however, longer-term tax-base effects depend on sustained visitor interest and legacy use of stadium infrastructure. Institutional fixed-income investors with exposure to municipal bonds financing stadium projects and infrastructure should model realistic utilization and revenue assumptions when pricing credit risk.

Risk Assessment

The upside scenarios are tempered by execution and cyclical risks. Tournament-to-tournament volatility in viewership, team performance and star-player availability can create significant revenue swings for broadcasters and sponsors. The U.S. men’s national team’s competitiveness and the marketability of marquee players will materially influence ratings and merchandising performance; a poor tournament showing can compress sponsorship renewals and secondary-market ticket demand. Conversely, breakthrough performances tend to create multi-year tailwinds, but these effects are lumpy and asymmetric.

Rights inflation is another structural risk. As competition among broadcasters and streaming platforms intensifies, rights fees can rise faster than underlying audience growth, squeezing margins for domestic leagues and smaller broadcasters. Platforms that overpay for rights without commensurate monetization—through ads, subscriptions or pay-per-view—create systemic risk for their broader content strategies and balance sheets. That dynamic also elevates counterparty risk for leagues and clubs dependent on large rights buyers.

Infrastructure and public-financing risks warrant scrutiny. Many stadium projects in the U.S. rely on mixed public-private financing; if projected matchday or event revenues fail to materialize, municipalities could face budget stress. For municipal bondholders, thorough scenario analysis of occupancy, event scheduling and ancillary revenues is essential. Additionally, reputational and governance concerns—ranging from stadium labor disputes to regulatory changes around sports betting—introduce operational risk layers that can affect near-term cash flows.

Finally, competition with other major U.S. sports for fan attention and sponsorship dollars persists. The NFL, NBA and MLB each command entrenched media ecosystems and advertiser relationships; soccer’s share of wallet will grow but is unlikely to displace incumbents quickly. This structural competitiveness constrains pricing power and necessitates differentiated content and fan engagement strategies from soccer rights-holders and clubs.

Outlook

Looking out to and beyond 2026, the U.S. soccer market presents a steady-growth thesis anchored in structural demand rather than episodic speculation. The maturation of youth development, the proliferation of soccer-specific venues, and the diversification of broadcast distribution channels point to a more predictable revenue base for rights-holders and clubs. For broadcasters and platform operators, the imperative is to construct multi-year monetization strategies that blend linear ads, streaming subscriptions and data-driven targeted advertising to capture the full value of increasingly fragmented audiences.

Municipalities and private developers face a bifurcated outcome: where stadiums and mixed-use developments are executed with conservative revenue assumptions and diversified tenant mixes, long-term returns can be attractive; where financing relies on optimistic matchday or tournament assumptions, downside credit risk increases. Corporate sponsors and apparel firms should plan marketing spend across multi-year cycles that smooth promotion around tournament peaks, rather than concentrate budgets solely on World Cup windows.

From a capital markets lens, companies with durable exposure to soccer demand—broadcasters with scale, sportswear firms with global distribution, and betting operators with product depth—are positioned to capture a disproportionate share of growth. However, entrants and over-levered rights bidders represent downside volatility to the ecosystem when rights inflation outpaces commercial revenue growth. Credit analysis should factor in both cyclical tournament effects and secular fanbase growth when assessing leverage and covenant structures.

Fazen Markets Perspective

Fazen Markets views the U.S. soccer evolution as a structural reallocation of discretionary entertainment spend rather than a zero-sum transfer from incumbent leagues. A contrarian yet evidence-backed observation: soccer’s TRUE commercial arbitrage resides less in raw audience numbers than in the sport’s calendar density. Unlike the NFL, which derives outsized economic value from a concentrated schedule, U.S. soccer’s increased number of competitive matches (domestic league, cup, continental competition, international friendlies) creates a more consistent flow of monetizable live inventory across the year. That recurring inventory is attractive to advertisers and digital platforms seeking steady engagement, and it reduces reliance on four-year tournament cycles.

Another contrarian point is that stadium-centric valuations have been undervalued by market participants who focus on headline franchise prices. The embedded optionality in ancillary real estate—retail, hospitality and long-term naming rights—suggests that well-located soccer franchises can extract outsized cash-on-cash returns relative to headline ticket revenue multiples when developers capture mixed-use synergies. Institutional investors should therefore evaluate franchise exposure not only on sporting metrics but on land-use and municipal economic plans.

Finally, although mainstream commentary often centers on the World Cup as the primary value driver, the sustained domesticization of soccer—evidenced by youth participation, academy monetization and steady matchday audiences—may ultimately create more durable returns for strategic media and apparel partners than a singular mega-event. Investors positioned for structural, calendar-driven monetization are likely to outperform those that chase cyclical World Cup-driven headline gains.

Bottom Line

U.S. soccer’s commercialisation since 1994 has shifted the sport from episodic headline events to a recurring, monetizable asset class; institutional investors should focus on rights monetization, stadium-linked real estate optionality, and counterparty credit risk in the run-up to 2026. Monitoring broadcaster deals, franchise valuations and municipal financing terms will be decisive for assessing risk-adjusted returns.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

See related macro coverage on Fazen Markets and our primer on sports rights economics at topic.