Will FIFA World Cup 2010 Excitement Increase US Soccer Popularity?

Though the U.S. is now out of the World Cup, Landon Donovan's goal last week against Algeria was another shot heard around the world.  The goal felt like a major sea change in how Americans view soccer. 

Will it now become America's fifth team sport, after football, baseball, basketball and hockey?

What Donovan's goal did was show just why soccer is popular in other countries.  The tension throughout a game builds and builds so that a single goal can be far more triumphant than a touchdown or home run.  The thing with soccer is that watching the game takes a different type of skill set: a near miss can be exciting too. For Americans, that may be asking a lot--similar to asking baseball fans to be excited about a ball with home run distance that goes just foul.  That's just not the way we think. "Almost" is not really a part of the American Dream.

The other major issue is how this all plays out financially.  Because soccer's played in two 45-minute halves without a break, there's no time for commercials, so networks can't make the same kind of killing as they do in Super Bowl ads.  However, there's a huge opportunity for merchandising and other revenue-getters.

First off, it's kind of a misnomer to say that soccer is not popular in the U.S.  It is.  For one, it's the most popular kid's sport next to Little League.  But the sheer fact that it has to compete with four other major sports, it looks like it pales in comparison.  But there are millions of soccer fans in the country--as many fans as make up the population of some countries.

Where there are millions of fans, there's the potential for millions of dollars:

Adidas is selling World Cup balls to fans for nearly $125 a pop. In 2006, adidas sold a reported 10 million units of the previous World Cup ball. This World Cup, both adidas and bitter rivals Nike expect to combine for nearly $4 billion in sales of associated merchandise (adidas is targeting $1.8 billion).

Check out this cool graphic from Mint.com: the Economics of the World Cup.  26 BILLION people watched the last World Cup in Germany.  Of course, that's worldwide--and those sorts of numbers won't translate to the U.S.--but, again, there are millions of rabid fans in the U.S. and millions more now ready to give U.S. soccer a second look. 

Most of the emphasis regarding soccer finance refers to the lack of commercial breaks in soccer, but merchandising has the potential to be a huge revenue stream.  If Nike is making money from merchandise, they'll be more willing to advertise during a soccer match.  However, other popular advertisers doing sports--cars and beer--will have less of an incentive, and that's a sticking point. 

But it might just come down to: if you build it, they will come. Soccer's got a lot of bad press with people saying it will "never be popular in the U.S."  Well, as in sports, records are made to be broken.  If there's a surge of interest in the sport, networks will start to answer the demand.  It'll take some time, as it takes a while to build up a fan base.  Yankee fans, for example, have built up over generations.  So Landon Donovan's goal might be the thing to finally put soccer on the map.  It was a true "game changer."

Then again, the sport may just be something that Americans follow every four years, like the Olympics.  Though Michael Phelps was hugely popular during his run, it's not like people are now clamoring to watch swim meets every weekend. 

What do you think?  Do you see soccer becoming popular here?  Have you watched any of the World Cup this year unlike other years?