U.S. men’s soccer is sick of losing the World Cup — and now it has a plan
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Americans are great at sports. The United States has won more Olympic gold medals – by far – than any other country. The U.S. women’s soccer national team has won four of nine FIFA World Cups all time. And yet, the U.S. men’s national soccer team has never won a World Cup. The team’s best finish was third place in 1930. In modern times, the U.S. men’s team has never advanced past the quarterfinals. If you don’t know already, the 2026 World Cup is coming to the U.S. (and Mexico and Canada). The draw for the World Cup will be held Friday in Washington, D.C., sorting 48 teams into groups. Those groups will play round-robin style to begin the tournament, which runs from June 11 to July 19. The World Cup final will take place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Yet again, the U.S. men’s soccer team isn’t expected to win – or even come close. Current odds on DraftKings peg the U.S. men’s team at 80-1, behind Spain, England, France, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Colombia, Belgium and Uruguay. Italy hasn’t even qualified for the tournament yet and is only 30-1. The U.S. Soccer Federation hopes the spectacle of next year’s event will be a catalyst to change the trajectory of men’s soccer forever. The organization, which functions as the governing body of U.S. soccer and is responsible for both promoting the sport and supporting all levels of play, has developed a “Pathway Strategy” to compete – and actually win – World Cups to come. The strategy has three prongs: reduce the financial barriers that limit youth participation in the sport, establish soccer as the most-played sport in the U.S., and then, finally, develop men’s and women’s national teams capable of winning World Cups every four years. “In the women’s game, we have more great players in America than any other country in the world. We probably could field a whole number of World Cup squads,” said JT Batson , CEO of the U.S. Soccer Federation, in an interview. “On the men’s side … the opportunity is to really focus on those top players at the ages 13 to 17 and 18 to 23 and to put them in the right environments, whether it’s the right professional clubs, whether it’s the right academy programs, or whether the right youth national team program to make sure that best against best happens more often, and that we’re putting those players in a position to to be world class.” Title IX, passed in 1972, gave college-aged women a leg up over many other countries in terms of opportunities to play high level soccer, explained Cindy Parlow Cone , the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, who works in tandem with Batson to lead the official governing body of soccer in the United States. That’s allowed the women’s teams to develop elite players relative to the rest of the world. “There was programming at a pretty high level on the girls and women’s side, both at the college level and within U.S. Soccer, which I think propelled the women’s team to the championships that we’ve seen,” Parlow Cone said. Batson explained to me that while the U.S. benefits from having a population of nearly 350 million people, it is cursed with a lot of land, making it more difficult for the country’s best players to play against each other and train together. “Think about a country like England. You can get in a car and drive to St. George’s Park, which is their national training center, or a bus, which massively lowers the cost and lowers the friction for the best players to play against the best players,” Batson said. “One of the challenges we have in our sort of physical scale is, how do you bring people together on a frequent enough basis to where the best can play against the best?” Of course, countries like Argentina and Brazil have a lot of land, too, and those nations win World Cups. That’s where building “soccer culture” in the U.S. comes into play, Batson said. Batson hopes the World Cup will act as a “forcing function” to grow the game among kids and increase investment at the highest levels. He noted the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center in Georgia will provide a state-of-the-art complex for the 27 U.S. national teams (across age group, sport variant, disability and gender), putting them all under one roof for the first time. “We would not have [that facility] without the World Cup coming here,” said Batson. Participation in the game will increase “at every level” because of the World Cup, Parlow Cone predicted. The U.S. has a unique window to capitalize on developing household-name stars with the 2026 World Cup, followed by the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the 2031 Women’s World Cup, which is also set to take place in the U.S. There are tens of millions of American soccer fans, though attention is fragmented between international leagues, and fans of women’s soccer don’t always bleed into the men’s game, Batson noted. About 130 million Americans were “engaged” with the last World Cup, and between 35 million and 40 million Americans are “really hardcore soccer fans,” he said. Batson hopes the World Cup will jumpstart the business of soccer, which he says is essential to developing a national team that can compete for a championship. “If we’re going to achieve what we want to go achieve, it’s going to take resourcing,” said Batson. “We’ve got to grow our media rights, we’ve got to grow our commercial partners. We’ve got to grow ticket sales. And a big part of the success of U.S. Soccer has been our philanthropic growth. People who’ve really stepped up to allow us to invest ahead of where the business market is.” On the record With Parlow Cone and Michele Kang … One of those investors is Michele Kang , who spoke to me along with Batson and Parlow Cone at this week’s 2025 U.S. Soccer Summit in New York. Kang is the owner of the NWSL’s Washington Spirit, which has reached the league championship game four times in the past 10 years, winning in 2021 and losing in the finals last season and this year. She’s also a billionaire, originally from South Korea, who has committed $55 million to establish the Kang Women’s Institute and fund youth soccer development. The Kang Women’s Institute will study and provide research to properly train female athletes. Most of the science behind training athletes has been geared toward men, Kang told me. “We’re training our female players as if they’re small men,” she said. “Not much research money is going into women’s athletics.” Kang hopes the institute acts like a “small match” that “lights a fire” for others to invest in training research for women. The Spirit also happens to be the team for which Trinity Rodman plays. Rodman is one of the NWSL’s biggest stars and the daughter of former NBA superstar Dennis Rodman . But she’s considering leaving the league for Europe – much to Kang’s chagrin. “We have probably the best, if not one of the best, fans. And you just step into the stadium, and actually our players have to wear earplugs because they’re so loud, so enthusiastic,” Kang said. “It’s going to be very hard to replicate that kind of environment. So we’re trying to convince her that this is her home, and we’re doing everything we can to keep her in Washington, D.C.” Still, Kang also admitted going abroad has its perks. She already owns teams in Europe and is looking to acquire teams in both South America and Africa, she told me. “If I were a player, if I had played in NWSL for five, six, seven, eight, years, I’d want to go try something new. I’d want to try some different environment,” Kang said. Rodman has played in the NWSL since 2021. You can watch that entire conversation here . Or listen here and follow the CNBC Sport podcast if you prefer the audio version. Contessa’s Corner Kalshi this week announced a new billion-dollar funding round, more than doubling its valuation from $5 billion to $11 billion since its last round in early October. It added new investors Ark Invest and Meritech Capital. Kalshi told me it’s looking to grow its direct-to-consumer business. There are questions about whether its partnership with Robinhood will end now that Robinhood has acquired its own derivatives exchange, MIAXdx. But I’m told the current valuation didn’t factor in the Robinhood tie-up. That eye-popping growth helps explain why seemingly everyone wants in on the predictions market. Fanatics launched its own prediction platform this week. “This is really the top of the first inning on some market that’s going to grow exponentially over the next five to ten years,” Matt King , the CEO of Fanatics Betting and Gaming, told us on “Squawk on the Street.” The first phase of Fanatics Markets will offer those prediction trades on sports, finance, economics and politics in partnership with Crypto.com . On Friday, it opens for business in the country’s most populous states of California and Texas, which don’t allow online sports betting, and in Florida, which does. That’s not going to make the Seminoles happy. They have a monopoly on gambling in Florida for their Hard Rock International brand. One thing to remember as the sportsbooks jump into the prediction fray: They have experience spotting “insider trading” — the kind of game-rigging that leads to scandals that dominate headlines and produce federal criminal charges against well known athletes. On Tuesday I moderated a panel at the Hope Global Forum in Atlanta with three team owners: San Francisco 49ers’ Jed York , Kansas City Royals’ John Sherman and Atlanta Hawks’ Tony Ressler . I asked them about the pitfalls of widespread sports betting; the threat of undermining public confidence in the integrity of professional sports; the harassment that athletes, coaches and referees are receiving from angry bettors; and how this plays out in the future. Ressler said the sports betting positives outweigh the negatives in terms of growing the fan base and increasing their engagement with the sport. But he pointed to player props being especially problematic. “Every league, certainly in the NBA, has to figure out how to both have sports betting, but actually focus on the areas that are most susceptible to abuse,” he said. We also talked about soaring team valuations, the potential for fractional ownership, and the challenges that come with college athletes getting paid through name, image and likeness deals. It’s a conversation worth watching. But what’s sticking with me is what York said at the end of the conversation: “I just hope that we don’t forget what makes sports special, and that’s the fans that come into the game,” he said, arguing arenas and stadiums are the last good semblance of a public square. “[It’s] where you meet other people you don’t know. You have a shared experience, I think that’s something that makes our country and our world special.” CNBC Sport highlight reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: Millennials are combining their love of sport with vacation to create a sports-driven tourism boom, reports Kaela Ling . Amazon keeps buying up sports rights because “they’re really working for us,” Jay Marine , Prime Video’s head of global sports and advertising, told CNBC. Local broadcast affiliate station groups like Sinclair and Nexstar want to get bigger through M & A, but they’re struggling to make it happen . Local broadcast stations own a variety of national sports rights, including WNBA, NWSL, women’s volleyball and track-and-field, and some local rights for NBA and NHL that used to be owned by regional sports networks. Fanatics announced Wednesday that its prediction market, Fanatics Markets, will launch this week in 24 states, including California and Texas, where mobile sports betting is currently banned. The platform will allow people to trade on events in sports, finance and culture. CNBC’s Laya Neelakandan has more details here . The big number: 57.2 million That’s how many people watched the Dallas Cowboys defeat the Kansas City Chiefs on Thanksgiving. That is a BIG number. It was the most watched regular season NFL game ever, according to CBS Sports. I mentioned in last week’s newsletter that 50 million was the “whisper” number for this game. Well, turns out that number was way too low. This wasn’t just the most watched game ever — it was the most watched game ever by a whopping 36%. The previous high for a regular season audience was 2022’s Cowboys-New York Giants Thanksgiving game. Quote of the Week “Talked to God and he told me it’s time to take a new step. It’s a new chapter.” -Lane Kiffin , the new head coach of LSU football, in an interview with ESPN’s Marty Smith upon leaving Ole Miss for its SEC rival. LSU will pay Kiffin $13 million annually over seven years. Is God an LSU fan? Maybe I’ll dig into that for next week’s Kickoff. Around the league Giannis Antetokounmpo may be the next NBA star to change locations, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports . If Milwaukee trades him, it would be the biggest trade since last year’s Luka Doncic – Anthony Davis swap. Antetokounmpo is one of the game’s top talents. The March of Dimes honored former NFL star and current podcast host Jason Kelce , seven-time Olympic champion swimmer Katie Ledecky , and NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps at a New York City luncheon this week. The event raised more than $1 million for infant health causes. The award winners are chosen by an executive committee that looks like a “Who’s Who” of sports media executives, chaired by CBS Sports’ David Berson and including NBC’s Rick Cordella , ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro , Fox’s Eric Shanks , WBD’s Luis Silberwasser , CAA Sports’ Michael Levine and IMG Media’s Hillary Mandel . Berson told me at the event it’s the one time each year the sports media world gathers in one room. League commissioners including the NBA’s Adam Silver and MLB’s Rob Manfred were also invited. Just about one more month until CNBC officially becomes part of Versant, the soon-to-be spun-off company from Comcast. Versant’s Investor Day is today, showcasing the company to investors and analysts. I’m told part of the presentation will include a fireside chat between PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and NASCAR’s Phelps. Versant will also become the parent company of the Golf Channel and USA Network, which airs NASCAR races.
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