Nearly 63 million people in U.S watched the World Cup Final. Will this interest in soccer last?

Nearly 63 million people in the U.S. watched Sunday’s World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina, Axios reports. Telemundo says the game, won by Spain in extra time, was the most-watched soccer match in the history of Spanish-language media.

There was evidence of the monthlong tournament across this country — from the Turkish team training in Mesa to Scottish fans playing bagpipes down the streets of Boston, to Norwegian fans pretending to row Viking ships in Times Square.

But lots of observers are asking — will this interest in soccer last?

Andrés Martínez, author of "The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport," spoke to The Show more about this. He’s also co-director of the Great Game Lab at Arizona State University and a professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Andrés, good morning. Thanks for being here.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: I’ll start by offering my condolences. I know you were very hopeful that Mexico would win the World Cup. I apologize that they did not, but it sounds like you did correctly predict the winner.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I did. I mean, like many other people, I should say, thought Spain was the most solid team going in, and that proved true.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so you came in to chat before the World Cup, and we talked a little bit about what a successful World Cup, specifically in the U.S. (although Mexico and Canada also co-hosted), would look like. Let’s start with those TV ratings. I mean, that seems like a lot of people watching a match that their country was not involved in.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: It’s really astonishing. One of my favorite things to come out of the World Cup was a headline from The Onion this week saying, “Nation Wakes Up From Strange Dream Where They Were Watching Soccer.” And I really think that captures sort of our wonder at how big soccer is now in the United States.

And I think we need to update the way we talk about it. We’re still talking about like, "Well, what’s our relationship going to be with the sport going forward? Has it really made it?" And yet, to your point with those TV ratings for the final, that’s more people than have ever watched a baseball game on U.S. television or an NBA game. That’s more people than have ever watched an NFL playoff game or a conference championship, short of the Super Bowl.

MARK BRODIE: Mm-hmm.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: That’s astonishing. And as you said, there wasn’t a single American involved.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: What would those ratings — I do think that we have — it’s well established that global football, soccer, is the Number 2 sport in the United States when it comes to its ability to aggregate audiences. And I do believe that when the United States Men’s National Team is playing one of these finals, the ratings will approximate Super Bowl ratings.

MARK BRODIE: You’re saying “when,” not “if.”

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I am saying “when.” I think that will happen in my lifetime, and I’m not that young. Obviously, we didn’t come close this time.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

Bloomsbury Academic, Arizona State University

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ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: But, you know, I was very bullish about the World Cup going in, but it sure exceeded my expectations.

MARK BRODIE: One of the things that got so much attention, and we talked about this when you came in before the tournament, were the ticket prices and observations that maybe the stadiums wouldn’t be full. That turned out not to be the case. Those stadiums were packed.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I mean, FIFA pulled off 104 Super Bowls over the course of five weeks. And again, I was very bullish, but I thought they had overreached, FIFA, in terms of where they set the pricing. Now, they acknowledged it was dynamic pricing.

So I really believed that at the 11th hour you would see sort of a clearance sale of inventory for the less glamorous, quote-unquote, "matchups" at the group stages. And yet they never had to resort to that. People were paying $300, $400, $500 for some of those group phase matches. Obviously, tens of thousands for the final.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: So FIFA came away from this tournament with a profit of $15 billion, where they had anticipated about $11 (billion).

MARK BRODIE: That’s unbelievable.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I also thought they had overreached just in terms of expanding the scale of the tournament to 48 teams. I thought, ah, the quality there is not going to be what it had been when you had 32 teams. The jeopardy is not going to be as much in the group stages because some third-place teams are going to go through. So I was worried we’d have more duds in terms of early matches, and that wasn’t the case either.

MARK BRODIE: Cape Verde would like to have a word about that.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I mean, unbelievable stories, both in terms of the stars showing up — like the Mbappés and the Messis and the Haalands and Harry Kanes — but just amazing stories of underdogs like Cape Verde.

MARK BRODIE: So, one of the other things that you had talked about was, when looking at whether or not this World Cup would be successful and what kind of impact on soccer it might have on this country, you talked about: Would it be something that was being discussed beyond, you know, at the games or on sports talk radio?

And I have to say, in the newsroom here, we have a lot of televisions, and especially in the morning, they’re all on different networks. Be it broadcast or cable, pretty much every day, at least a couple of segments were about the World Cup. It seems like this went beyond just sort of the hardcore soccer fans discussing this.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Yes, and I think some of the social media platforms and some of the things that often can break us down into silos and reinforce our smaller, ever-smaller communities of interest and affinity — in this case, I think helped amplify. And it was kind of a reminder that people still crave shared experience. And I think one of the things that’s been wonderful to see about America becoming a footballing nation in the sense of global football is we all crave global connectivity.

And so much of this World Cup was about the vibes. Like you said, people joining the Norwegian rowing, University of Kansas marching band learning the Algerian anthem because they were hosting it. You know, people in Chattanooga for generations are going to feel that they’re world champions because they hosted the Spain team. So all of those vibes that were shared, it was wonderful and it went far beyond the stadium.

I think one of my favorite metaphors for this, or analogies, was people were saying it felt like a really fun sleepover that you get to have with your cousins, even if your parents maybe don’t always get along. So, you know, we’re in a fraught political moment, but this was just, you know, a global party.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and stories of, for example, apparently ranch dressing is not something that the rest of the world knows about, and fans who came to this country, or Texas barbecue or free refills — like, it was so interesting to hear not just what Americans thought about watching a sport that I think, frankly, many of them are not super familiar with, but what people from Europe and South America and Asia thought about coming to this country.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Right. And we got to see ourselves reflected in that mirror, right? We got to see how others — and it was a reminder that the U.S. is just a phenomenal place to visit if you’re from the outside, and just the diversity. And this was a continental tournament, as you said, not just in the United States, but across North America. So to see that notion that we’re a region, too, and people enjoying Mexico City and then Vancouver and L.A., it was really wonderful.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so what do you think will be the lasting impact on the United States of co-hosting this World Cup?

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: I think it’s another milestone in the consolidation of this sport in the U.S. and of the U.S. in this global sport. You don’t have to wait four years for the next one. The Women’s World Cup is next summer in Brazil, also very exciting, because if a lot of what we’ve experienced this summer is the U.S. importing this global sport, the women’s game is in many ways a U.S. export.

And I think global football has that two-way global engagement. And so whenever we celebrate a Women’s World Cup, we’re also celebrating the role of the U.S. in bringing that sport. And I should say Spain is the first all-around global champion of the sport in the sense that they’re the first country that is simultaneously champion in the women’s game and in the men’s game.

MARK BRODIE: Huh, interesting.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: So it’s really exciting to think about Brazil next summer, L.A. Olympics ’28, and then we get the Women’s World Cup in ’31.

MARK BRODIE: All right, lots to look forward to. That is Andrés Martínez, co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU, author of the book "The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport." Andrés, thanks so much for coming back in. I really appreciate it.

ANDRÉS MARTÍNEZ: Thank you, Mark. That was fun.

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