US Soccer’s goal for the 2026 World Cup
· Yahoo Sports
The Signal Insight
The 2026 FIFA World Cup — jointly hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico— represents a coming of age for the sport that most of the world calls football in the country that calls it soccer. JT Batson, CEO of US Soccer, hopes the kickoff to the tournament this June will also be a vindication of four years of work to modernize the group behind the US men’s and women’s national teams, and a moment for more brands to understand the spending power of their fans.
“Having the World Cup here has been a bit of a forcing function to crisply articulate your soccer strategy as a brand,” he says. US Soccer counts two dozen commercial partners, from American Airlines and AT&T to Visa and Volkswagen, who Batson says have been drawn by the demographics of the sport’s large US fanbase. “It’s growing, it’s young, it’s diverse, and it’s tech savvy; those are all things you care about as a brand.”
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Surveys suggest the sport has the momentum to build that fan base further. A Harris Poll last year found the number of US soccer followers increased 17% between 2020 and 2025. Almost three-quarters of Americans now say they are interested in soccer, of whom 20% describe themselves as “obsessed.”
US Soccer’s own growth has exceeded that pace: Its revenues are up more than 300% since 2023, as it changed its commercial model to bring sponsorship, media, and marketing rights in-house. Batson has pulled in record philanthropic donations, including $50 million from Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank for a new national training center in Atlanta, and $30 million from Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang for women’s and girls’ programs.
Another factor has helped the corporate interest, Batson adds: the fact that many large companies are run by executives who grew up watching the sport. “Generations ago, that was not the case.”
Batson, an early employee of Mozilla who had played for Augusta Arsenal in Georgia before becoming a referee, came to his job after a chance encounter with US Soccer’s board chair on an Amtrak train. “I learned it was a nonprofit that didn’t do fundraising, so I went home and made a fundraising strategy,” he recalls. He joined as a volunteer before being made CEO in 2022. Here’s how he describes his game plan for the World Cup and the sport he now oversees.
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: US Soccer’s revenues have increased by more than 300% since 2023. What has it taken to do that?
JT Batson: The biggest thing for us is embracing that we are a soccer nation. We’ve grown a tremendous amount since the 1994 women’s World Cup, and we set out a strategy last year of being “in service to soccer.” We asked ourselves, “If we stepped out of our role and were back to being a fan, what would we hope US Soccer would be doing?” There were three things we needed at the same time to unlock our potential: trust, the right strategy, and the right communication. If you’re missing any one of those three, this doesn’t work.
What has driven the growth in corporate partnerships?
First, the US soccer market is large, with well over 100 million fans. Second, the US men’s and women’s national teams are among the most popular teams in the country. And third, so many people in positions of responsibility in corporations are soccer people through and through. In a previous generation, maybe they’d have been football people or baseball people or basketball people. This generation deeply understands the sport and cares about it as a growth driver. A number of big brands have told us their No. 1 growth priority is soccer.
What’s your strategy for using the World Cup to elevate soccer in the US?
First, we’ve got to make sure that our team is in the best position to win. We’ve hired the best possible coaches for our team, and we’ve got a great player pool. We’re also very focused on making sure everyone in America can participate. So we’re making it super accessible to go into a Walmart or a CVS and buy US Soccer gear, and we’re supporting watch parties in hundreds of communities.
What we want to hold ourselves accountable to is being in a position where soccer is the most-played sport in every community. We’ve announced initiatives around soccer in schools, aimed at ensuring anyone who wants to play soccer can play. We also focus on making sure kids are having fun. Very often there’s a professionalization of kids’ sports at too young an age. Of course we want to produce players who can win World Cups, but at its core, you want to train hard when you’re having fun.
Critics including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani are concerned that World Cup tickets will be unaffordable. Is the sport pricing fans out?
All sports are having to confront the fact there are way more people who want to be in the stands than there are seats. We’re very mindful of that, [so] for all our games, we’ll have a reserved set of tickets that are very affordable for our core fans. We’re looking at how we leverage technology to ensure our diehard fans are closest to the field.
With 27 national teams, you’re surrounded by coaches. What have you learned about leadership from them?
I’ve asked them about the dynamics of managing a team and they ask me as many questions around managing a business. What we find is that there’s a lot in common. Probing an analogous space leads you to learn and stretch.
What leads to success in soccer is very similar to what leads to success in business. A key thing is to remember that every market is unique. If you enter a new market and you do not become a student of that market and learn everything about it, the rules, it’s going to eat you up and spit you out. You can have the greatest [product], but if you can’t solve for the consumers in that market, you can waste a whole lot of time and money.
Will soccer in the US one day have the global status that the Premier League, the Bundesliga, or Serie A do now?
Our market is very big. It is growing, we now have infrastructure, and we have talent. You’ve also got a generation of Americans who’ve grown up when they’ve only known Major League Soccer to exist and it’s a core part of their media diet. Talent is a leading indicator of success in an organization, and the talent that’s choosing to go to MLS is getting better and better. Then you apply the great commercialization of sport in the US, and you’re onto something. The [team] owners in the US are the best in the world. Think about their resources and their sports business acumen. The Bundesliga or Serie A don’t have that. The ownership depth and breadth is a huge strategic advantage.
Notable
- US Soccer held a summit in Washington, DC, in December that drew more than 400 partners and donors, highlighting the organization’s “financial glow-up” under Batson, Sports Business Journal reported.