Tyler McBrearty

I compiled all the biggest US sports broadcasts of the last year. Here’s how this World Cup stacked up. The numbers are impressive, but the potential is mind-blowing: if the USMNT could have kept their act together, they had the potential to actually *surpass* the Super Bowl. In short, this has been the year of “football.” Of the top 37 sports broadcasts, 36 were some brand of football (🏈=27, ⚽️=9). You have to go all the way to 37 before you hit the first non-football/soccer broadcast—Game 7 of the World Series. Obviously a very strong showing for soccer as it stands, but when you look at the “what ifs,” it starts to get really interesting: The NFL establishes a precedent where viewership totals increase in a marginally diminishing manner throughout the playoffs, before eventually disproportionately increasing for the Super Bowl: The 2025 NFL regular season averaged 18.7M viewers per game. The Wild Card round averaged 32M (+71.1%) Divisional round averaged 39.2M (+22.5%) Conference championships averaged 47.4M (+20.9%) But then the Super Bowl had 125.6M viewers for an enormous 165% jump relative to the conference championship round. Interestingly, we saw a similar pattern in this World Cup: Looking only at non-USA games to remove the dramatic USA multiplier distortion from the underlying tournament curve… The group stage averaged 9.07M per game Round of 32 averaged 15.61M (+72.1%) Round of 16 averaged 22.10M (+41.5%) Quarterfinals averaged 26.0M (+17.6%) Semifinals averaged 25.6M (-1.5%) And then the Final drew 66.4M (+159.4%) for a remarkably similar championship game jump to the that which we see in the Super Bowl. So what might have been? What if the US made it to the QF, SF, or Final? In the group stage, the non-USA games averaged 9.07M viewers per game. The US averaged 24.13M—a multiple of 2.66x. In the Round of 32, non-USA games averaged 15.61M viewers. USA vs Bosnia drew 36.2M—a multiple of 2.32x. In the Round of 16, non-USA games averaged 22.10M viewers. USA vs Belgium drew 50.1M—a multiple of 2.27x. Taking a bit of liberty and estimating conservatively, we can assume a US appearance would have ~doubled the average audiences of subsequent matches. Which would mean… A 52M quarterfinal… A 51.2M semifinal… And a 132.8M final…exceeding the 125.6M from Super Bowl LX. And that’s not even factoring in what may have been an even higher USA participation multiple for the championship game—mirroring the disproportionate effect we already observe in viewership based on the raw game alone, regardless of the participants. I’m sure there’s some kind of market saturation ceiling effects you hit at some point which likely means the Super Bowl can’t be dramatically exceeded, but it looks like the potential is definitely there for soccer to at least rival football, when played at the highest level. A very encouraging trend for anyone optimistic about the future of soccer in the US.

RUMOR: Dusty May is rumored to have left Michigan to avoid a looming transfer portal tampering scandal. May assembled nearly his entire roster using the portal last year en route to a title. Major shades of Jim Harbaugh going to the NFL amid Michigan’s sign-stealing fallout.