‘Excitement into habit’: How Major League Soccer is riding the World Cup wave

If you thought Americans were moving on from soccer after the World Cup, think again.

In the week following the end of the tournament last month, Major League Soccer said that ticket sales surged 62% and viewership was up more than 40%. Even in May, overall viewership this year was already up more than 60% compared to 2025 in the lead up to the World Cup.

In the days before the final, MLS launched its biggest coordinated campaign ever across all teams — with its largest marketing spend. Called “Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here,” the campaign featured Lionel Messi, David Beckham, Magic Johnson, Kevin Hart and more. MLS Commissioner Don Garber told Reuters that he wanted the World Cup to be “the rocket fuel that would drive the next generation of growth” for the league.

What exactly does that look like? How does the MLS sustain that momentum? According to Marcela Garcia, vice president of brand marketing at MLS, it comes down to “turning excitement into habit.”

Part of the answer, she told The Current, is more closely aligning the play schedule with that of global leagues. Starting next season, the MLS schedule will run from July 2027 to May 2028, with a winter break from mid-December to early February.

“We’re building on the attention that is already there,” Garcia said. “There’s no fabricating that. That’s where the global soccer conversation exists, and we will be part of that world now. The target audience has been receptive to this shift; we can speak the language of the rest of the world at the same time.”

Going global and local

With its new schedule set for next season, the MLS global streaming deal with Apple TV also gives the league a way to reach more viewers around the world, helped by its roster of international stars, Garcia said. (MLS and Apple reworked its agreement last year, which will now end earlier than expected with the 2028–29 season.)

But while soccer is a globally recognizable sport, MLS has the benefit of also getting hyperlocal in the U.S.

“We were able to synchronize all clubs to have local activations at scale [for the World Cup],” Garcia said. “Every club has their own flavor of soccer celebration, but they all engaged new fans.”

Rogelio Vega, CMO of the MLS club Seattle Sounders and the National Women’s Soccer League club Seattle Reign, said that Seattle’s World Cup activations drew up to 13,000 people for U.S. and Mexico matches.

The first matches for the Sounders and Reign after the World Cup were also each team’s best-attended match of the year, he said.

“The biggest takeaway was pretty simple: The community is here, and people will show up when we give them a great product and an experience that feels like it’s for them,” Vega told The Current.

“The tournament also helped us connect with communities across the region that we haven’t always reached or served as well as we should. When we built programming, communications and experiences with those communities specifically in mind, people came out, supported and came back.”

Now the focus is on maintaining the relationship with those newly engaged fans — in different ways than with the yearslong devotees. As Vega said, those who have followed the teams for years aren’t the same as those who became interested during the World Cup.

“For us, engaging any fan comes down to understanding what part of the experience matters most to them: the product on the field, the community around the club or the overall matchday experience,” he said.

Sustaining casual and avid fandom

The divide between casual and die-hard soccer fans might be even wider when it comes to the leagues they gravitate toward. An LEK report from last year found that casual fans were more likely to be fans of MLS, while avid fans preferred European leagues.

But Vega is hesitant to make broad generalizations. He noted that casual fans might prefer MLS because it’s more accessible; games are in their time zones and teams are a part of their community.

“Someone waking up at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday to watch a European match is probably a more established and committed fan, but that doesn’t make their connection more meaningful than the person supporting their hometown club,” he said.

And with MLS changing its schedule next year, the U.S. soccer fandom could become less fragmented.

“It’s hard for any sports league to be fully synergized,” Garcia said. “But with soccer, we have an opportunity to drive growth with tentpole moments. We want to capitalize on all of them.”

Brands are all in

It’s not just new fans that are showing up for soccer: Brands are, too, of course.

MLS sponsorships were on the rise even before this year’s World Cup. In the first half of 2024, league sponsorship revenues grew 10%, according to MLS. Team sponsorship revenue grew 13% year over year in 2024, according to SponsorUnited.

The World Cup generated a record $1.19 billion in ad revenue.

Needless to say, the brand demand for soccer is there for partners both old and new. Financial technology company Chime became an MLS partner this year and sponsored the MLS All-Star Game.

“What we’ve learned is that this is a participatory fan base. They don’t just consume the sport; they take part in it. And they can tell the difference between a brand that shows up and a brand that adds something to the experience,” Vineet Mehra, chief growth and marketing officer at Chime, told The Current.

MLS appeals to a diverse demographic that is additive to sponsors. According to the league, it has the highest share of Gen Z and millennial fans across U.S. men’s pro sports, with the average fan age at 38 years old. It also outpaces other leagues in Hispanic fandom at roughly 30%.

“We’ve grown alongside MLS for nearly two decades, and one of our biggest learnings is that soccer fandom is incredibly passionate, diverse, community-driven and tech-savvy,” said Bill Moseley, director for sponsorships and experiential at AT&T.  

“Early on, our focus was supporting a league we believed had tremendous potential. Today, that focus has evolved into creating experiences, access and storytelling that bring fans closer to the sport they love.”