Low USMNT Gold Cup Attendance Is About The Tournament, Not The Team

Forbes

6 days ago

Sebastian Berhalter of United States controls the ball during a Group D match Saudi Arabia on ... More Thursday.
The United States men's national team has always had trouble competing with the kind of crowds the Mexico national team is able to pull on U.S. soil on.
There's socioeconomic factors at play, of course. People who go to USMNT games – especially friendlies and lesser competitive fixtures – do so out of fandom of American soccer in particular. For Mexican expats living in the States, El Tri games have a far wider and more visceral patriotic appeal, the kind that Americans associate more with the Olympics and men's and women's World Cup.
But in the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup, what is most striking about the sparse attendances at USMNT games is that they've not only lagged El Tri fixtures, but also many others in the group stage.
Crowds of less than 13,000 greeted the USMNT in the first two group matches.
Here's a sampling of some other matches that outdrew the Americans' wins over Trinidad and Tobago and Saudi Arabia. It doesn't include the early games in single-venue doubleheaders where it was clear most fans appeared showed for the later match.
*Match played in Canada
The crowd of 20,918 that viewed the Americans' 2-1 win over Haiti on Matchday 3 in Arlington, Texas, was a modest improvement, but still underwhelming.
This isn't the first time the American team has struggled to draw crowds in this tournament on its home soil.
Trending Downward
The numbers from the 2021 group stage – in which the USA played all three games in Kansas City – were actually worse. And it's important to understand most of the above matches were also held in markets where the same expatriot effect that boosts El Tri attendances also applies to other Central American communities, on a lesser level.
But maybe the sparse numbers – as opposed to the somewhat more promising total of 54,625 combined fans who watched earlier friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland – suggests that the tolerance for endless Concacaf competition among the region's elite nations is fading, at least as it pertains to spending hard-earned money to watch those competitions in person.
Mexico's matches have also drawn disappointing crowds relative to previous Gold Cups – albeit still far larger than those at USMNT games.
Some have attributed that to fears over the games becoming targets for activity by the federal government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet those same concerns theoretically would have also applied to the communities likely to attend matches involving Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. That doesn't appear to have happened. And much larger crowds have turned out to watch Mexico's representatives in the ongoing FIFA Club World Cup in recent days against River Plate at the Rose Bowl and Real Madrid in Charlotte.
Since the creation of the Concacaf Nations League in 2019, Mexico and the United States have played more competitive fixtures than ever on U.S. soil. (Mexico has also relentlessly hosted friendlies in the U.S. rather than Mexico because of the far higher ticket revenue potential.)
Throw in the Gold Cup every two years, and Concacaf is asking American fans of its two biggest nations to care about five regional competitions every World Cup cycle.
The struggles at the gate could be as simple as the confederation simply overestimating American fans' endurance when it comes to competition in a region they've always dominated, when it's clear that where both would rather be – realistic or not – is on a global stage.