The World Cup Is Everyone’s Game

World Cup Fever has finally gripped America. It turns out there is nothing like hosting a tournament to finally make a nation pay attention. According to Register's 1,136-person study (reflecting the US census and fielded July 7th-10th), 2 in 3 Americans are watching.

Listen, folks, this is the same number that reports they watch the NBA. The N. B. A. And in my book, given basketball had about a 70-90 year head start as a mainstream high-school sport, that's quite the achievement. This long-standing presence is one reason basketball became deeply embedded in American school culture and why many communities built gyms and organized interscholastic leagues around it decades before soccer achieved similar status.  But soccer (or dare I say football?) is finally catching up.

What may surprise you is just who is watching. The chart below shows the female and male viewership indices relative to the total viewership for each sport we surveyed. While men index higher for sports like the NFL and the NHL, the 2026 FIFA World Cup was the only completely gender neutral sport we studied. 

And beyond this, what is quite telling is how avid this FIFA fan base is. We asked people just how much of each sport's seasons/tournaments they were watching, and FIFA had the highest percentage of avid fans of all the sports surveyed. (Avid fans were defined as those who reported they were watching the whole season/event, including playoffs and championship games, vs casual fans, who were those who watched just their favorite team or the playoff/championship games.)

Soccer fans are passionate. And that passion is equal among men and women.

One final statistic that shows the game belongs to us all: we asked Americans if they care who wins the World Cup, and women were statistically significantly more likely than men (41% vs 35%) to report they cared a lot.

The truth is, when you combine four (four!) Women's FIFA World Cup USA victories with the fact that millions of American women grew up playing soccer, it’s clear that this World Cup really is everyone's game.