On a blazing afternoon in Chicago, 63,000 people packed Soldier Field — shoulder to shoulder, including President Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey — to watch Germany play Bolivia in the opening days of the 1994 World Cup. A month later, the Rose Bowl brimmed with more than 90,000 fans for the U.S. team’s shock win over Colombia. Those images helped change how Americans saw the sport.
Before 1994, soccer was marginal in the United States. Surveys placed it near the bottom of popular sports, often associated with immigrant and working-class communities in cities like Chicago, St. Louis and parts of the Northeast. Leagues had come and gone — the North American Soccer League folded in 1984 — and many Americans dismissed soccer as less physical or compelling than football, baseball or basketball.
FIFA saw opportunity: the U.S. was a huge untapped market with the infrastructure to host a global tournament. U.S. soccer officials hoped that staging the World Cup at home would introduce the sport to a broader audience. What unfolded exceeded those low expectations. Stadium after stadium sold out, drawing tourists, longtime fans and many newcomers who came out of curiosity and for relatively affordable tickets. The atmosphere was loud, colorful and distinctly international — drums, chants, face paint and flags created a carnival-like environment unfamiliar to many American sports fans.
Media also played a key role. Univision and announcer Andrés Cantor, with his elongated “Gooooooal!” call, helped turn matches into appointment viewing for Spanish speakers and many English-speaking viewers who felt the broadcasts captured the drama of the tournament.
On the field, the U.S. men’s national team helped galvanize interest. After a 1-1 draw with Switzerland, the Americans stunned Colombia 2-1 at the Rose Bowl — the country’s first World Cup win since 1950. That victory, watched by more than 93,000 fans, generated a wave of excitement. The result was later overshadowed by the tragic murder of Colombian defender Andrés Escobar after he scored an own goal, a grim reminder of the tournament’s wider significance in other countries. Still, for many Americans, the team’s competitive play made soccer feel like a sport with a real future at home.
The immediate effects were visible but incremental. Total attendance for the 1994 World Cup topped 3.5 million — a FIFA record that still stands — and the spectacle proved the U.S. market could sustain major soccer events. Two years later Major League Soccer launched, beginning a slow but steady professional revival. The U.S. women’s national team exploded onto the global stage after winning the 1999 Women’s World Cup, a defining moment that accelerated youth participation and public interest. Over the following decades international stars arriving in MLS, like David Beckham in 2007 and Lionel Messi in 2023, along with expanded TV access to European leagues and the popularity of the World Cup video game franchise, further broadened soccer’s reach.
Today soccer’s profile in the U.S. is dramatically different: youth soccer participation surged, MLS grew from 10 teams to 30, and soccer now ranks among the country’s top sports by popularity. The 2022 World Cup averaged millions of American viewers per game, signaling robust national interest.
But the landscape in 2026 will be very different from 1994. The tournament is being co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, includes more teams and matches, and will play to a far more diverse American public — foreign-born residents rose from about 8% of the population in 1994 to roughly 15% by 2025. That diversity promises richer cultural representation in stadiums, but other issues complicate the picture. Ticket costs driven by dynamic pricing have raised affordability concerns, and U.S. travel and visa policies that include bonds of up to $15,000 for people from certain countries have created uncertainty for some visiting fans; several nations that qualified for the tournament are affected. Geopolitical tensions and questions about participation by teams from politically sensitive countries add further complications.
In short, 1994 didn’t instantly make soccer America’s top sport, but it did break a long stalemate. It proved U.S. audiences would show up, embrace the party of the World Cup, and support national teams with passion. That tournament laid the groundwork for a steady, sometimes uneven growth that has transformed the American soccer scene — and set expectations for a very different, far larger World Cup on home soil in 2026.