The 2026 FIFA World Cup is three weeks away. Fifty million American adults have no idea it is happening.
A survey of 1,000 American adults conducted by ticketing platform SeatPick has revealed a remarkable awareness gap across the country ahead of the biggest sporting event ever to arrive on US soil.
One in five respondents – 19.3 percent – said they did not know the World Cup would be hosted in the United States at all. Extrapolated across the adult population of approximately 260 million, that figure translates to around 50 million people.
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The numbers get more startling from there. Three in four American adults – 76.1 percent – have no idea who Mauricio Pochettino is, despite the Argentine being the head coach of the US Men’s National Soccer Team. Just 12.6 percent of respondents correctly identified him.
The remaining 8.8 percent who guessed incorrectly placed him as a South American president, a former NFL quarterback, a Michelin-starred chef from Buenos Aires or – perhaps most memorably – a bear from an Argentinian children’s cartoon.
The city-by-city breakdown makes for uncomfortable reading. San Antonio tops the list of the most unaware cities, with 58.3 percent of respondents saying they did not know the World Cup was coming. Las Vegas follows at 35.3 percent, with Indianapolis at 30.2 percent and Denver at 29.6 percent.
Most remarkable of all, two official World Cup host cities appear in the top ten most unaware. In Atlanta, 20.3 percent of respondents did not know the tournament was coming. In Dallas, the figure was 19.1 percent – despite Texas being home to two of the tournament’s host venues.
Hotel operators have taken note. Eighty percent of hoteliers surveyed separately described the tournament as a “non-event” in terms of booking performance, with reservations falling well short of expectations.
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The bright spot in the data is sentiment. Among those who are aware of the tournament, nearly half – 46.7 percent – expressed positive feelings about the US hosting it. Men are significantly more enthusiastic than women, and positivity peaks among the 25 to 44 age group.
Awareness, it seems, is the problem – not interest. The World Cup just needs more Americans to know it is coming.
Photo: John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF
