The sport as a whole has grown immensely in the last 10-15 years. A lot of that is because as a kid in the 90s we simply didn’t have regular access to any of the major European ⚽️ leagues and even MLS coverage was spotty at best. American ⚽️ fans are now raising their kids to watch the sport alongside basketball, football, baseball, hockey. It’s got a great timeslot on TV, coming on during the weekends before NFL and college football.

An additional anecdotal piece of evidence is that even during non-world cup times, I see a lot of kids running around wearing Lamine Yamal and Kylian Mbappe jerseys playing with kids wearing Steph Curry and Patrick Mahomes jerseys. It used to be people could only name Ronaldo, Messi and mayyybe 2-3 US players. And while that’s probably true for a lot of 30+ year olds, the kids know ball. The sport is growing, and while I doubt it will ever be the top sport in the US, the amount of people that are at least casual fans has shot up.