How Soccer Is Becoming The Biggest US Sport (And Big Business).

My 2 year old plays soccer every Saturday morning. Well, he doesn’t actually play. He has little interest in the game (which breaks my heart) and he ends up on the playground instead. Watching the other kids play (while mine went down the slide) got me thinking about the business of kids soccer and it turns out there are millions of kids in these soccer sessions every week. Yes. Millions.

According to a Michigan State University research paper there are close to 4 million members in soccer clubs across the US. Each family pays ~$856/yr for participation making this a whopping ~$4Bn industry and I’m guessing you didn’t know that. But how does this lead to my conclusion that soccer is about to be the biggest sport in the US? Three trends point to the exponential growth as the world’s favorite game slowly but surely takes over the US. 

1. Immigrants: For immigrants to America the traditional US sports - baseball, football, hockey and basketball - are not the sports of their youth. Immigrants from South America, Africa and East Europe have grown up with soccer. Soccer is a sport with a rich history where these immigrants come from with World Cup wins and legends/heroes from their youth. In systems thinking this is considered a positive reinforcing loop for soccer. America has always been a nation of immigrants. Just so happens that the new immigrants are soccer lovers.
2. Participatory nature of the sport: As can be seen from the same research paper soccer is now a more participatory sport than football, baseball, basketball and (unsurprisingly) hockey. The term ‘soccer mom’ is a well recognized term in our lexicon. It’s easy to get a ball and get a game going and I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of those pick up games around your city or suburb. Increasing with the number of participants is the number of viewers. Soccer viewership at the professional level is now ~18,000/MLS game, which is more than the average for the other main US sports. This is another positive reinforcing loop for the growth of soccer in the US.
3. Low barrier to entry: There are two sub-themes here
   • Cost of admission: Soccer is the ‘cheapest’ of the professional sports. I was on a call with an executive at one of the professional soccer clubs and by his estimation it costs $5M to build a pop up soccer stadium and $100M to build a full stadium. You need close to $1Bn to build a football stadium. Sure, the returns from these sports far outstrip what professionals in soccer can currently make but not for much longer. In the more mature European soccer market, the stars make their fortunes kicking a round leather ball around a rectangular field.
   • CoEd nature of the sport: Soccer is the only popular sport that is CoEd. With the fast evolving view of gender this will increase the prominence of soccer as an inclusive sport. A great example of the benefits of this is a family who come to my son’s soccer lesson; the younger boy plays in the same session as my son while the older girl plays in the session right after ours; the parents get a two for one. The success of the female national team is also helping. 
     

There is a lot of money to be made in this sport and, as we know, where the money is the business will follow. The business of soccer is a system and these three trends continue to positively impact things. To varying extents they'd be negative reinforcing loops for the traditional sports as we have only so much time and money to dedicate to too many activities for our kids.

As my wife and I sit and watch another football player (Teddy Bridgewater) go out with a concussion, my wife (a Dallas football fan) continues to wonder when football will end up like boxing.

Personally, as a slightly biased African, I can’t wait till we start calling soccer it’s real name; football. 

Seyi Fabode is a Partner at Asha Labs, providing utilities & SMBs with systems thinking, strategy (from data), planning & implementation of technology in a fast changing world. He has 15+ years of experience applying technology solutions to asset management, workforce enablement and consumer engagement in the US & UK. Seyi writes about energy (future utility), technology (smart cities) and people (systems thinking) at www.asha-labs.com/blog. Follow @Seyi_Fab.