27 July 26
Soccer Cultures of the United States
I recently watched a video on How can MLS become an elite league?. The discussion touched on the different soccer cultures in the United States. One of the discussants, Paul Tenorio, always responds to the question of “Will soccer make it in America?” with the assertion that soccer has made it in America, it is just very bifurcated, with many islands of soccer interest. This got me to try to enumerate the various soccer cultures in the United States. Researching this took me to some marketing literature which was helpful, but marketing clusters aren’t quite the same thing as cultures, which I will not very rigorously define as nexuses of activity and knowledge. Anyway, here’s my list. People can and often are members of several of these.
- Heritage soccer fans. These are subdivided into Latin American heritage soccer fans and European heritage soccer fans. These are people who grew up in environments where soccer was a dominant sport and they picked up their fandom from family, friends, or local traditions.
- World culture sponges. These are sports followers who at some point learn that soccer is the global game and start to absorb all that culture — the famous players, the teams, the geography, the history.
- Youth soccer culture. This is subdivided into children’s recreational soccer and elite youth club soccer. This includes both the youth participants and the parents who are organizing their activities.
- College soccer culture. These include both the players on college teams as well as the students and community members who go to their games.
- Local fandoms. These are people that get drawn into the fanbase for a nearby team. Think Portland Timbers or Seattle Sounders.
- Women’s soccer fans. These are people who are drawn to the dominance of US women’s soccer internationally and at the league level and appreciate its importance to youth and college women’s sports.
- Gen Z soccer fans. They tend to learn about soccer through global social media and video games (e.g. EA Sports) and often are fans of charismatic players rather than of teams.
- Multi-sports soccer fans. They follow lots of American sports but have been drawn into soccer because of events like the arrival of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami in 2023 and now the 2026 World Cup.
- Long-time American soccer inhabitants. People for whom soccer has been huge in the course of their life. They often have played or play it at an amateur or professional level, and keenly track the development of the USMNT, USWNT, MLS, NWSL, USL, and so on.
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