Copa America 2024 is part of a sequence of major soccer events that will land in the United States between now and the 2026 World Championship. The connector between these two competitions will be the “extra large” Club World Championship that FIFA is organizing for 2025 in that territory and with the participation of 32 teams from six confederations.

If we adjust our gaze, we will see a fact that is obvious: the phenomenon of soccer in the United States will have these major competitions as consolidation of the growth of a sport that has its strong pillars in the MLS and in the NWSL, its women’s version.

A country with an indisputable sports culture, the United States now has in its “soccer” a new object of study to analyze trends and behaviors. The growth rate of MLS, the arrival of Messi at Inter Miami – with an impact on the entire league – and a disruptive agreement like the one Apple made with MLS to be its exclusive global broadcaster, are some indicators of this rising trend of soccer as a topic of interest.

In this sense, soccer in the United States has particularities that deserve to be known. Its fans do not come only -as it happens in Latin America- from the family legacy, but there are many fans who come to soccer from other sports, consume it almost exclusively on social networks and platforms and embrace that fanaticism when they are almost adults. An almost countercultural look: they are fans who have not been involved with fanaticism for a club since childhood.

In August 2023, the consulting firm For Soccer published a more than interesting report to analyze the new soccer fan in the United States. United States of Soccer is a survey of more than 2,000 respondents between the ages of 16 and 49 from all 50 U.S. states.

New fans are joining the soccer phenomenon even though they have never played soccer. Playing soccer has always been a driving element in becoming a soccer fan. Eighty-three percent of fans surveyed have played it in the past and 45% still play in leagues or informally. But new fans account for 38% and are less likely to cite it as the singular source factor of their fandom. They find new paths to soccer that are not based on having played it as a child.

New arrivals note that their preference for soccer stems from their fondness for sports in general. The report highlights that newcomers to soccer, unlike any other segment of respondents, become soccer fans because they are fans of the sport. One possible reading is that their very nature as sports enthusiasts now leads them to embrace soccer.

Another relevant fact from the report is that the so-called new arrivals represent the lowest percentage -among any other segment in the report- of those who came to soccer because they had played it. In the traditional view, they came to soccer late: 24 percent of them became soccer fans after the age of 25. That profile leads them to YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit and Twitch as their main sources of information and content consumption compared to the so-called “established fans”. That is, those who have been so since childhood.

Data updated by For Soccer toward the start of the Copa America indicates that within the “new arrival” category, more than 40 percent of black soccer fans started their hobby within the last five years. And that black fans are 40 percent more likely than white fans and 36 percent more likely than Hispanics to have recently started their hobby.

Within those preferences, global teams such as Manchester United, Real Madrid and Arsenal have the largest fan bases. And as with other fan profiles, the influence that brings them closer to this fanaticism is not due to family tradition or culture, but because they choose “winning teams” -or they perceive them to be, since Manchester United, for example, has not won titles in a long time- or because of how they connect with these clubs through video games.

The data indicates that 39% of the so-called new arrivals consolidated their fanaticism for soccer after the age of 18. Thirty-two percent play fantasy soccer and 34% bet on sports. Their average age is 31 years old and 73% of them have played soccer at some time, although they do not recognize the reason for their fanaticism but “that soccer offers attractive moments among the many sports they play”.