Football fever is sweeping the United States, and it marks a cultural shift that goes far beyond a single tournament being held on American soil.
When Americans think of European cultural exports, they typically picture music and film, from The Beatles to Harry Potter and One Direction crossing the Atlantic into mainstream life.
What receives far less attention is the increasingly powerful role that sport plays in reshaping culture, and that oversight is becoming harder to sustain with each passing year.
Football is already the fastest growing sport in the United States, with 21 million Americans playing regularly, placing it just behind basketball at 24 million and comfortably ahead of ice hockey at just 2.1 million participants.
With the US hosting the World Cup this summer, staging three Formula 1 races annually, and welcoming the Olympics in 2028, traditionally European sports are mounting a serious challenge to the stranglehold of the so-called big four American sports.
Taken individually each of these events carries significant weight, but together they are creating a level of exposure for European sports and brands that the United States has simply never experienced before.
The line between European and American sport is fading faster than most observers anticipated, driven by money, talent, and shifting media habits across both continents.
Football provides the clearest example, with global stars such as Lionel Messi, Heung Min-Son, and Luis Suarez transforming the profile of Major League Soccer after glittering careers in Europe.
American appetite for European football is growing in parallel, with April’s Manchester City versus Arsenal match breaking the record for the most watched Premier League game in US history.
Ownership structures reinforce the trend further, with the 2025/2026 Premier League featuring eleven clubs under American ownership, including the Kroenkes who control both Arsenal and US franchises the LA Rams and Denver Nuggets.
The NFL’s international expansion adds another dimension, with regular season games in London helping grow American football overseas while simultaneously opening US franchises to new commercial audiences abroad.
Popular culture is reflecting this convergence too, with the success of Ted Lasso demonstrating that stories rooted in English football can genuinely resonate with mainstream American viewers at scale.
For European brands, the World Cup offers a particularly powerful platform to connect with American consumers, but the most effective approaches will begin long before the opening match is played.
Tudor’s long-term partnership with David Beckham stands as a model worth studying, initially positioning the brand within football culture before allowing the relationship to expand naturally alongside Inter Miami and MLS more broadly.
As Alistair Watkins, founder and chief executive of marketing agency Influence Sports and president of sport and entertainment agency Mongoose, argues, brands must resist treating football as a short-term sponsorship opportunity rather than a long-term cultural investment.
Watkins argues that marketers should understand this moment as a broader cultural convergence between Europe and the United States, rather than viewing it purely through a sporting or World Cup lens.
Changes in media consumption, ownership structures, and fan behaviour are all drawing the two markets closer together, with major events accelerating rather than causing that process.
For European brands willing to look beyond the stadium and tap into the wider culture surrounding sport, the opportunity in the United States has rarely been larger or more ready to be seized.