Soccer didn't sneak past baseball in America. It walked past it. According to Ampere Analysis data published by The Economist, soccer now holds a larger share of U.S. fans than baseball — making it the third most popular sport in the country, behind American football and basketball.
This happened before the 2026 World Cup comes to North American soil. The tournament will add rocket fuel to something already moving fast.
Where the numbers stand
American football still dominates with 36% fan share — that's not changing anytime soon. But the order behind it matters, and baseball has now been pushed to fourth. For a sport that spent a century calling itself America's pastime, that's a real identity crisis.
The more telling data comes from the Aspen Institute's 2024 study on youth participation. Among American children aged 6 to 17, soccer is preferred over American football. Let that sit for a moment. The next generation isn't choosing the NFL's sport first.
Among the youngest bracket of that group, the top three are basketball, baseball, and soccer — so baseball still has a foothold with the youngest kids. But in the broader 6-to-17 range, soccer has already won the argument.
What this means beyond the headline
MLS has spent years trying to convince skeptics that soccer has a genuine future in the U.S. market. These numbers are the best argument the league has ever had. Expansion franchises, media rights negotiations, and sponsorship deals all get easier when you can point to data showing you've overtaken a legacy sport in fan base size.
The 2026 World Cup — hosted across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico — arrives at the exact right moment. A tournament of that scale, on home soil, landing in a country where youth participation is already tilting toward the game? The growth curve doesn't flatten after that. It steepens.
Baseball's grip on American sports culture has been loosening for years. Shorter attention spans, longer games, an aging fanbase. Soccer offers the opposite: end-to-end action, 90 minutes, global stakes. The kids already know which one they'd rather play on a Saturday morning.
The 2026 World Cup hasn't even kicked off yet. By the time it ends, these numbers will look conservative.
