Undoubtedly Soccer is experiencing an uptick in terms of growth in the USA.
The numbers from the last three years are enough make any sports fans become very optimistic about soccer's future.
People have tried to popularize soccer in the USA before, most notably with the North American Soccer League in the 1970s, but soccer is more popular in the U.S. right now than it has ever been.
There are many reasons for the rise in popularity of this sport in the United States. Among them are the arrival of world famous players (Kaka, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, David Villa, Andrea Pirlo, Didier Drogba), the improvement of the national team in recent international competitions, the construction of new arenas specifically for soccer and the growth in population of Latinos in the country — 54 million in 2013, representing 17.1% of the US population, according to the IBOPE.
Major League Soccer (MLS), the American soccer league, estimates that the United States has about 70 million soccer fans and 20 million practitioners of the sport.
US Youth Soccer, a nonprofit organization that organizes games and promotes the sport among children, grew from 800,000 registered members in the 1980s to 1.6 million in 1990 and more than 3 million today.
Soccer has grown so much that Americans refer to "soccer moms" to designate suburban mothers who spend hours taking children to sports.
Women's soccer is also contributing to this growth. The Women's World Cup final beat the NBA Finals (19.94 million viewers) and the Stanley Cup finals (5.5 million viewers).
In terms of sponsorship, the current main soccer sponsors, Visa, Nike, Nestle, and McDonalds are investing hard and investing millions dollars to the development of soccer and infrastructure in all levels of soccer.
Despite showing continuous and significant growth in recent years, soccer still needs to win many more fans to conquer the United States. It won't be long before soccer is living its American Dream.
