For the first time since 1994, the World Cup is back in North America.
The tournament kicks off on Thursday with a match between Mexico and South Africa, while the USMNT gets underway Friday night against Paraguay. Excitement throughout the United States for the tournament at large is solid, but optimism for a serious USMNT run isn't quite as common ... at least according to a recent Seton Hall Sports Poll.
With soccer's biggest stage stateside, Seton Hall's pollsters took the temperature of 1,601 American adults, gauging their thoughts (and evolution of opinion over time) on the tournament at large, the USMNT's chances and more.
Here's the data Seton Hall Sports collected about public opinion ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
According to Seton Hall's polling, 33% of Americans, 81% of self-described soccer fans, 51% of sports fans and 67% of "avid" sports fans will watch and/or follow the summer's matches. This represents growth across the board from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar -- according to Seton Hall, the "will watch and/or follow" numbers have ticked up four points among all Americans, four points among soccer fans, eight points among sports fans and seven points among avid fans.
These increases may be underselling matters as well.
"There's no other way to say it -- the World Cup is the world's biggest sporting event," Daniel Ladik, Ph.D., methodologist of the Seton Hall Sports Poll and associate marketing professor at the Stillman School of Business, said in a release last Thursday. "The Summer Olympics may have more countries and athletes, but when it comes to total viewership and total revenue, the World Cup is in a category all by itself. Note, the actual 2026 World Cup interest among Americans may be even stronger than we can report. The 2022 World Cup poll was collected just two weeks before the start of the games while our 2026 numbers were collected eight weeks before the start."
Growth from 2022 may be correlated with a heightened interest in the tournament among younger respondents specifically. Fifty percent of all 18- to 34-year-olds polled were also planning to watch and/or follow.
USMNT-specific hopes, however, are more tempered. Asked what round they think the U.S. will reach at the tournament, the most popular choice among soccer fan respondents (tied with "don't know" or "no opinion") was the round of 16 (20%), where the USMNT has exited in its past three World Cup appearances in 2010, 2014 and 2022. Quarterfinal hopes come in at 18%, while round of 32 earned 13% of responses.
The most optimistic of respondents did outflank their most negative counterparts -- winning the World Cup came in at 8%, while losing in the Final, winning the third-place game and losing the third-place game all earned an additional 5%, compared to the 6% who anticipate the team being eliminated in the group stage.
Seton Hall has been tracking poll respondents since April 2025. Interestingly, while excitement for hosting the World Cup exists, it's actually on something of a wane from the initial responses received in the spring of last year.
The poll asked: The 2026 Men's FIFA World Cup will be held in the U.S. The U.S. last hosted the Men's World Cup in 1994. Does the World Cup being hosted in the U.S. make you more interested in watching 2026 World Cup games?
Among soccer fans, affirmative responses fell from 80% in April 2025 to 63% in April 2026. This trend repeats across the board to a lesser extent -- positive responses from the general populace fell from 38% to 27%, while the drop for sports fans and avid sports fans was 54% to 42% and 62% to 57% respectively.
Looking for a source for the drop? Inflated ticket prices are likely a good place to start. The cheapest ticket for the USMNT's opening game sits at $900 on VividSeats as of Tuesday afternoon.
Seton Hall asked respondents in October if they had planned to purchase tickets to watch the tournament in person. Affirmative responses had gone down across all subgroups polled by the time respondents were asked again if they had indeed tried to buy tickets in April: Soccer fans from 40% to 30%, sports fans from 21% to 16% and avid sports fans from 33% to 25%, influencing an overall four-point drop across all respondents.
Editor's note: These results are derived from a Seton Hall Sports Poll conducted ahead of the 2026 World Cup among 1,601 U.S. adults. The Poll, which is sponsored by The Sharkey Institute within Seton Hall University's Stillman School of Business, features a nationally representative sample from YouGov PLC., weighted on U.S. Census Bureau figures for age, gender, ethnicity, education, income and geography with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.0%.