Soccer, or football as its European founders prefer to call it, is enjoying a stateside surge. The value and audience of the US’ domestic leagues is increasing year-on-year, and the country is set to co-host the world’s biggest sporting event – the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Amidst this growth in the popularity of football in the US, European leagues are moving in to try and grab a slice of the pie. One such league is Lega Serie A, the Italian top-flight and home to some of football’s most recognisable international brands.
“The great news is we have the wind in our backs at Serie A broadly, and obviously that carries over into the US,” says Andy Mitchell, CEO and Managing Director, at Lega Serie A USA, speaking to Insider Sports Snr Journalist, Callum Williams.
“This season we have five teams in the Champions League. We’ve earned that extra seat, which is amazing and really demonstrates how well the league is performing in European competitions, which obviously is incredibly important.
“We have the top American player in Christian Pulisic, as well as a number of other USMNT players. In fact Serie A has the most up-starters on the USNMT than any other league, and so that draws a lot of organic attention here.”
As noted above, Serie A has some widely recognised footballing brands. Mitchell cites the likes of multiple Champions League winning sides AC Milan and Inter Milan, alongside the likes of Juventus and Roma, as some of the stand out examples.
This international presence, bolstered by the presence of several US national team players on Serie A’s roster, will endear the league to an American fanbase, its officials believe. With the World Cup just a couple of years away, the time is now to step up this brand building process.
This is of course not the first time the US has hosted a World Cup, however. The 1994 edition of the tournament was held in the country, but soccer did not enjoy a particularly long-term boost in visibility in the decades that followed. Stakeholders need to ensure the 2026 World Cup is a different story.
“If I look ahead to the World Cup, obviously there’s gonna be massive organic growth and that’s just gonna happen,” Mitchell continues.
“I think as a soccer industry and for Serie A specifically what we really need to focus on is retention. We’ve been in this moment before in the US, probably at a different scale, but in 94 everybody thought that that was the moment that soccer was going to really take off.
“What we saw is following the World Cup (1994), we kind of sank back down to where we were previously. I think it’s on me and it’s on everybody else in the soccer industry to really think about how we drive retention following the World Cup.”
Click HERE to watch Andy Mitchell’s full interview with Insider Sport discussing Serie A’s US expansion plans, the commercial opportunity of the 2026 World Cup, and the significance of the Italian football brand.
