WASHINGTON, D.C. — Forty percent of U.S. adults plan to watch at least some of this year’s World Cup on television, similar to the 38% found in 1994, the last year the quadrennial event was held on U.S. soil. The other times Gallup has measured Americans’ interest in the tournament — in 1990, 2002 and 2006 — the figure was closer to 30%.
The percentage planning to watch at least some of the World Cup this year includes 8% who say they will watch “as much as possible.” This compares with 11% who said the same in 1994.
The 2026 tournament is being held in 16 cities across North America, with most matches taking place in the United States. It began on June 11, near the end of the poll’s June 1-15 field period, with the U.S. team playing its first match on June 12. The U.S. men’s team has become a regular participant in the World Cup since 1990, after a more than three-decade absence spanning the 1954 through 1986 tournaments.
Among Americans who describe themselves as soccer fans, 83% will watch at least some of the World Cup, with 27% planning to watch as much as possible. Gallup also measured viewership intentions among soccer fans in 2006. That year, 73% of soccer fans planned to watch some of the World Cup, with 33% saying they would watch as much as they could.
Men, Young Adults, College Graduates Among Most Likely to Watch
World Cup viewing intentions vary by demographic subgroup. Close to half of those living in the Eastern U.S. (49%), college graduates (48%), young adults (46%), men (46%), people of color (45%) and upper-income Americans (45%) plan to watch at least some of it.
The 2006 survey also found that higher proportions of college graduates, young adults and people of color planned to watch that year’s World Cup.
Soccer a Mid-Tier Sport in U.S., by Share of Fans
Twenty-seven percent of U.S. adults identify as fans of professional soccer. This ranks squarely in the middle of the distribution of 15 sports included in the survey. Americans are most likely to say they are fans of Olympic sports (59%) and professional football (54%).
Professional baseball, college football, professional basketball, college basketball and figure skating claim more fans than soccer does, while auto racing, professional ice hockey and mixed martial arts have about the same proportion of fans.
Football consistently leads as the top sport by a wide margin when Americans are asked to name, in an open-ended question format, their favorite sport to watch. In the latest update on that question, from 2023, 41% named football, well exceeding baseball (10%), basketball (9%) and soccer (5%).
Young adults (34%), people of color (37%) and Eastern U.S. residents (32%) are the demographic subgroups for which soccer fandom exceeds 30%. The higher rate for people of color appears to largely reflect greater interest in soccer among Hispanic adults. The current survey does not have a sufficiently large sample of Hispanic adults to report reliable estimates, but since 2012, an average of 47% of Hispanic Americans have said they are soccer fans.
When Gallup first asked Americans in 2006 if they were fans of professional soccer, 19% said they were. Six years later, the percentage had ticked up to 23% and increased further to 28% in 2017 and 35% in 2019. The current figure is significantly lower than in 2019 but similar to 2017.
However, fan percentages are down significantly for all sports in this year’s poll compared with the 2019 update. It is unclear why the 2019 estimates were universally higher. When compared with the 2017 survey, soccer is doing a better job holding onto its fan base. The other major pro sports have experienced drops ranging from three to six percentage points during that time, while soccer has held steady.
Bottom Line
The World Cup is drawing greater U.S. attention to soccer, with a higher proportion of Americans planning to watch the tournament than in prior World Cup years the U.S. has not hosted. The sport hopes to capitalize on the increased attention by increasing its fan base in this country, which has stalled in the past decade after showing steady growth between 2006 and 2017. Still, the stable proportion of U.S. soccer fans over the past decade compares with shrinking fan bases for other sports over the same period. Soccer could even be poised to increase the number of U.S. fans it has in the future, given its stronger attachment among younger than older Americans.
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