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Small sample sizes.

I’m talking an entire state, and I could expand that observation: when I was long haul trucking. I saw it all over the place. Dual-purpose football fields.

Did you know there is a new pro soccer league (United Soccer League) that is coming online in 2028? It switches to the European model, and the European academy system, rather than the current “pay for play” system in youth soccer? The new stadium deals are already being made.

The day is coming where the rights to a 16 year old will be held by a soccer club......and everyone below 16 is waiting for their 16th birthday.

Marketing. It will be the undoing of MLB and the NBA. Soccer will supplant both of them once the adult interest turns. And it already has.

Small sample sizes.

My observations are based on 50 years of observations in Connecticut, northern Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, Georgia and Arizona. It includes institutions that were too poor to have football. In Georgia, my boy was of prime Little League age, and his teammates played football in fall, NOT soccer. That was only last decade. Maybe your part of North Carolina is loaded with IT ex-pats that provide a skewed view.

The ONLY place I have seen soccer here in big-city Phoenix/Glendale/Mesa/Scottsdale outside of insular Latinos playing each other in parks was an overcrowded British-themed pub. All of the patrons (there WERE a lot of them) appeared to be European ex-pats watching a UK soccer match at noon (prime time in England), meaning we had to eat elsewhere. That is not a reflection of the society at large.

I agree soccer will continue to grow only because almost every young man and woman under the age of 30 played it in organized sports as a kid.
Where as in my day it was baseball, basketball and football.
Hockey because of the cost of the equipment and ice time required much more money and dedication.

When I was a kid(63 now) we all played baseball, basketball and football. We also played street hockey and occasionally pond hockey. Now, ALL kids play soccer.

The other major factor is that hardly any mom wants their son to play football anymore due to the concussion issues.

Most of the best baseball players now come from the Caribbean or Central/South American countries. Baseball has been very very good to me. Pedro and Big Papi are heros in the Dominican Republic. All young boys there want to grwo up to be baseball players.

In the suburbs of the USA I think more young boys want to be Messi now than Arron Judge.
However, in the hood they ALL still want to be Lebron.