With the universally-loved TV series Ted Lasso and the rippling news of actors Ryan Reynold’s and Rob McElhenney’s purchase of Welsh football team Wrexham (and the documentary that came with it), “soccer awareness” in the United States may be at an all-time high.
Initially, soccer was introduced to the US by way of immigrants. In industrial towns across the northeast, factory workers made clubs and played matches against each other on weekends. With multiple failed attempts at making organized leagues gain traction, the sport’s embryonic popularity fizzled out quite a bit as the US’s working class powered through the Great Depression and the Second World War.
Come the sixties, the United Soccer Association was formed in 1967, consisting of European and South American clubs that were given local names. Simultaneously, the National Professional Soccer League was created, and with their contract with CBS looking like a sure-shot to mass popularity, TV ratings were so low the agreement was soon canceled. After 1 year, the two leagues conjoined to form the North American Soccer League, hoping to combine fan bases and boost ratings.
Unfortunately for soccer at this time, the National Football League (that’s the NFL) had just received a facelift, entering a new era. With the introduction of the Super Bowl in 1966, and the NFL-AFL Merger in 1970, the NFL’s popularity skyrocketed as television ratings boomed entering the 1970s. Along with this, Major League Baseball was in peak popularity as well, reigning decade after decade as America’s Pastime, with multiple games on television and radio nearly every day of the week from April to October – but this didn’t stop soccer’s fight for popularity just yet.
By the time Pele came to play soccer in the US towards the end of his career, he was already an international icon for almost two decades. With his performance in the 1970 World Cup being the first to be televised around the world in color, record ratings were achieved. His splash landing in New York City to play with the Cosmos in 1975 brought more awareness to American audiences, with icons such as Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis, and Elizabeth Taylor in attendance at his first press conference.
While his playing career in the US only lasted roughly 4 years, his impact on the game in the US laid the groundwork for where it is now – yet soccer was still nowhere near the forefront of American culture.
Entering the 21st century, there was once again a push in programming revolving around soccer. Manchester United and Real Madrid legend David Beckham was at the peak of his international fame entering the 2000s, and films such as Bend it Like Beckham (released in 2002, which is to this day the highest grossing soccer movie ever) and 2005’s comedy classic Kicking and Screaming (featuring Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall) began to grab the attention of American audiences. Again, it is shown that the tactic of marketing the sport in a fun, comedic, and digestible form – such as TV shows and movies – would help soccer expand to more of an American audience.
The US got to host its first World Cup in 1994, on the condition that the country created a professional soccer league again – as the country had not had one since 1988. While the ‘94 Cup to this day was the most attended in history, Major League Soccer (now the main soccer league in the US) was formed in 1996. In its inaugural season, the total attendance across all games that season was 2,785,001. Now in 2023, the total attendance hit a record-breaking 10,900,804. And since Ted Lasso was released in 2020, that 3 year span saw a massive increase of nearly 2.25 million attendees.
There is no denying the correlation between American interest in soccer and streaming content. As the sport continues to grow in the states, odds are we will continue to see it integrated into our daily media consumption.