Americans are watching soccer on TV even outside the World Cup

Now that the data has settled the matter of whether Americans care about soccer – a whopping 25 million tuned in to TV broadcasts of Sunday’s USA-Portugal match – the naysayers are turning the conversation to the question, “Yes, but how much do they care about soccer?”

Sure, 25 million is impressive -- the game was watched by more Americans than the NBA finals or the World Series, according to the New York Times --  but skeptics argue but the international  soccer is simply filling in for that other great quadrennial TV sports fest, the Summer Olympics. When the World Cup is over, they say, soccer’s Cinderella status will be restored. After all, the biggest TV audience for Major League Soccer last season was the 320,000 that tuned into its playoff game.

But that’s a spurious comparison, because those who watch soccer broadcasts on U.S. TV during the regular season, i.e. between World Cups, tend to watch the game’s elite leagues. And the MLS is not one of them.   

First things first: Sure, the NFL Superbowl audience dwarfs Sunday’s World Cup number by a factor of four. And while the audience for the summer Olympics in the U.S. may be slightly larger than that for the World Cup, that is a global anomaly – close to 1 billion people watched the 2010 World Cup final, compared with around 900 million for the biggest broadcast of the 2012 Olympics, it’s opening ceremony.

But while only 320,000 people watched the top broadcast of the U.S. domestic MSL, NBC – which broadcast every game of last season's English Premier League – reported a season-wide audience of 30 million. The biggest TV audience for regular sesason games tended to be a little over 1 million – close to the audience for the average NBA regular season game -- but the final Sunday showdown that settled the English league title drew an audience of 5 million, according to NBC. That puts it on a par with the final-game audience for the NHL. And the FOX broadcast of the all-Madrid 2014 European Champion’s League final drew 2 million viewers.

NBC bet heavily on English football, spending $250 million to snatch the rights from FOX and ESPN, and it has more than doubled the weekly audience. Those Chevy truck spots at half time suggest advertisers like the demographics, too.

Back to the World Cup, then: Firstly, seeing the U.S. finally emerge on the global soccer stage going toe-to-toe and almost beating teams of the quality of Portugal – featuring many stars of Europe’s top leagues, and arguably the world’s best player, Cristiano Ronaldo – will almost certainly bring many of those fans back to the TV screening of the Germany game, although being played at noon on Thursday inevitably means a far smaller audience than Sunday's game.

Still, after the World Cup, when the next league season begins in the fall, a growing number of Americans will continue to watch soccer on TV. No, they’re not likely to watch the MLS, because the World Cup has given them a taste for the elite game. American soccer fans reaching for the remote will tune in to the English Premiership and the European Champion’s League, precisely because that’s where they can watch the players who have thrilled them at the World Cup – Van Persie and Robben, Neymar and Messi, Mueller, Benzema, Sanchez, Suarez and more – week after week. Indeed, the American players most familiar to both U.S. and global TV soccer audiences are striker Clint Dempsey and goalkeeper Tim Howard, precisely because they’ve established their credentials in the English Premier League. Don’t be surprised if the exploits of Team USA at the World Cup see a few of the squad’s brighter lights suddenly whisked out of MLS and into European clubs. That, simply, is where the action is.