MLS works to bring in a new generation of fans as the World Cup comes to an end

CHICAGO — For the past five weeks, a bar in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood has become one of the country’s biggest World Cup watch parties, with lines stretching around the block for the biggest games.

This is all the doing of Chicago’s Major League Soccer club, the Fire. By the time the final whistle is blown on the World Cup between Argentina and Spain on Sunday, an estimated 60,000 people or more will have come through at some point in the summer for a taste of World Cup fever.

This watch party and others like it around the country are one piece of Major League Soccer’s efforts to capitalize on this World Cup summer here in the U.S.

Hosting the 1994 World Cup was transformative for the sport of soccer in the United States. World Cup fever led millions of children to sign up for youth leagues. Many Americans saw games aired on TV for the first time. And it led directly to the creation of Major League Soccer, as the establishment of a top-division men’s professional outdoor league was a condition of awarding the U.S. the tournament.

Since then, the league has done decades of work to grow its fanbase and stature in the world of soccer. MLS kicked off in 1996 with 10 teams; last season it reached 30 teams, the same number as Major League Baseball and the NBA. In the early years, only a few dozen games were on TV each season; today, every game is televised on Apple TV.

Now, MLS hopes that 2026 can be just as transformative as 1994. The question is: how?

The Costco free sample experience

The Chicago Fire had a puzzle to solve. The FIFA World Cup was coming back to the United States — and with it would come a once-in-a-generation opportunity to use the world’s largest sporting event as a potent accelerant to grow its fanbase, like harnessing a cart to a rocket ship.

But Chicago would not host any games, having sat out the bidding process at the behest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who found FIFA’s demands for expensive renovations to the city’s premier stadium, Soldier Field, too much to ask of city taxpayers.

“At the end of the day, this is the biggest sporting event in the world that takes place once every four years. And it’s not happening in Chicago,” said Dave Baldwin, the Fire’s president of business operations.

“And we had a decision to make,” he said. “One was to just bury our head in the sand and just watch on TV like everyone else, or the other one was to really rally behind it, put some dollars behind it.”

In the end, the Chicago Fire put just under $3 million to build up the space at the bar, called Recess. It is massive, with ample space indoors and out. In the center of the patio stands what looks like a jumbotron plucked from an arena nearby and set it down on a platform, with all four sides showing that day’s game. Around the space are Chicago Fire decorations, sign-up sheets, contests and team merch for sale.

“I compare converting non-soccer fans to soccer fans to my experience when I go shopping at Costco, which is I never knew that I needed 800 teriyaki meatballs, but I was walking through the line, I had a chance to sample, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing,’ and I go buy one of those giant boxes,” Baldwin said. “I have met very few people that come out to a match and don’t want to come back.”

As the MLS season kicks back into gear, 22 clubs are running a promotion called “First Match on Us” or “Next Match On Us,” with free tickets for first-time attendees.

Casual sports fans view soccer differently today than they did in the 1990s, said Brian Bilello, the president of the New England Revolution, one of the teams participating in the promotion.

Bilello played a key role in bringing World Cup matches to Gillette Stadium, the home of both the Revolution and the New England Patriots. The stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, also hosted France and Brazil in a pre-World Cup tune-up friendly in March. The Revolution saw the World Cup as an opportunity to attract fans who aren’t diehard soccer followers, but rather the Boston sports fan who simply had yet to try a Revs game.

“One of the most important fans that we need to grow collectively in our league is that core sports fan that also likes soccer. In 1994, I don’t think those fans were open to that. They were just like, ‘Ah, soccer sucks. I don’t like soccer,'” said Bilello. “That doesn’t really exist as much anymore.”

The Messi effect

This week, Major League Soccer rolled out an ambitious, eight-figure marketing campaign called “Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here.” It includes a star-studded commercial that aired during both semifinal games and will run again during Sunday’s final, which is expected to be watched by tens of millions of American viewers.

The centerpiece of the ad is Lionel Messi, the 39-year-old global superstar and captain of the Argentina national team. In 2023, Messi left a wildly successful career in Europe to join the MLS club Inter Miami, a blockbuster move that has already paid dividends for the league as a whole, with attendance and viewership up since his arrival.

“There were a lot of people that thought he was coming here to retire, and it’s been the opposite,” said Camilo Durana, the league’s chief business officer. “Rarely do you see him getting subbed off. He wants to play the 90 minutes. He’s intense. He wants to win.”

Messi’s performance in the World Cup has been another advertisement for MLS, Durana said. Argentina will play in Sunday’s final against Spain; a win would be its second consecutive title with Messi at the helm and he’s in the running to win the Golden Boot race for most goals scored in the tournament. Messi has scored eight times and is in second place behind France’s Kylian Mbappé, who has ten goals.

“What Messi’s arrival did — and what this World Cup we believe will do — is it’ll encourage more players to come,” Durana said.

Players are the other big audience MLS is targeting with this World Cup. Even as its quality of play has improved dramatically over the years, MLS is still dogged by a reputation for being a tier or two below Europe’s domestic leagues.

MLS was directly involved in the U.S. bid for this World Cup to ensure that its teams’ facilities would be front and center in the hosting plan.

Each host stadium was paired with nearby soccer facilities for visiting teams to train in the days immediately preceding each game; MLS worked to ensure those venues were, as often as possible, MLS team stadiums or training centers. (Other venue training sites included Division I college soccer facilities, municipal sporting complexes and one NWSL stadium, the Kansas City Current.)

Additionally, each World Cup team chose a base camp in North America to stay and train between games. Many chose MLS facilities. That included high-profile teams like Argentina, which stayed in Kansas City to train at a Sporting Kansas City center, and Brazil, which trained at Red Bull New York’s state-of-the-art Columbia Park Training Facility in New Jersey.

The goal was to show top-flight players from around the world what life could be like in MLS.

“Players talk,” said Durana. “Often before a player is transferred, they ask around and ask people what they think. So it’s really important for us that players have great experiences as they experience the World Cup.”

Many American soccer fans still prefer watching higher-tier European leagues like the English Premier League or Germany’s Bundesliga. But improving the quality of players in MLS could lead to higher-quality competition — which then would draw more fans, MLS hopes.

“Major League Soccer players scored 10 goals in the group stage, and so I think that validates everything that we’re doing, and it shows the quality that we have on the MLS pitch,” Durana said.

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