Soccer fans want us to believe that their sport is more popular than baseball. Maybe for the next few weeks, but that’s because our nation is temporarily filled with foreigners who are almost as passionate about their national teams as Chicago Cubs fans were when they won the World Series in 2016.
Scottish fans have demonstrated their love for the national team by drinking all of the good beer in Boston, leaving nothing left but Coors Light.
Americans like big events. We pay attention to curling and luge every four years, not because we like curling or luge, but because they are part of the Olympics. That’s especially true in years when the Games are in our country.
The World Cup, which is also held every four years, is in the United States this year for the first time since 1994. And, to be fair, it’s not just foreign fans who are excited about their teams. The U.S. team has won both of its first two games to secure first place in its group, with one game remaining before the knockout round.
And so, enthusiasm for soccer has probably never been higher than it is right now. Which has led to the ludicrous claim being repeated over and over during the World Cup that soccer is now more popular than baseball.
That claim is based entirely on a survey by “The Economist” that found football was the most popular sport at 36 percent, followed by basketball at 17 percent, soccer at 10 percent and baseball at nine percent. A one-percent difference in a poll is the only underpinning for the argument that soccer has surpassed baseball in the hearts of American sports fans.
What do the other numbers show?
Total attendance for Major League Baseball games in the 2025 season was 71.4 million fans. Total attendance for Major League Soccer was 11.2 million. MLB is averaging about 2.3 million television viewers per game. MLS is averaging about 120,000 viewers per game.
I understand that MLS is not the top league in professional soccer. But that’s another problem as to the sport’s popularity in America. The best soccer teams in the world play in Europe.
Soccer is a better youth sport than baseball, for a couple of reasons; the most obvious being that baseballs hurt a lot more when they hit you. Beyond that, baseball requires every kid to be alone at the plate, whether they want to or not. Soccer allows indifferent kids to just kind of run along with the pack.
Ever since the youth soccer boom of the 1970s, people have been predicting that it would take off as a spectator sport once all those kids grew up. It didn’t, for the simple reason that other sports are more exciting to watch. Including baseball.
Both sports are plagued by a lack of scoring and a pace that, at times, can seem ponderous. The difference is baseball fans are OK with periods when the game slows down. They can order a beer and a hotdog; and take in the beauty of the ballpark as they wait for the action to pick up. There’s a reason why they call it our national pastime.
Soccer fans are banging drums and blowing horns, dancing and screaming the whole game, while the players trudge up and down the field toward a scoreless draw. It’s all very foreign and exotic, but the appeal won’t last.
Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail.com
Walt Rubel's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.