St. Paul, MN Ranks as One of the 20 Best Places for Soccer Fans

Even though soccer has been on the rise in popularity for a while in the US, I feel like it's still that way. Still 'on the rise'. For some reason, the popularity of soccer here just doesn't match the popularity it has in other countries.

However, more and more professional soccer teams are being created in the US, and more and more people are going to see their teams play, including in Minnesota.

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How Popular is Soccer in the US?

According to Northeastern Global News, soccer is only the 4th most popular sport in the US "despite seemingly every child under age 12 being on a team".

Emilio Garcia, Unsplash

Our top three most popular are pretty basic: basketball at 3rd, baseball at 2nd, and football in 1st place. Makes sense.

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I know some big soccer fans, though, and there are clearly soccer fans all over the US, or teams wouldn't keep popping up like they are. I wasn't expecting, though, that a Minnesota city would rank so highly as a great city for soccer fans.

The Best Cities for Soccer Fans, 2025

The Loons, Minnesota's pro men's soccer team, formed in 2015. The Aurora, Minnesota's pro women's soccer team, was formed more recently, in 2021.

David Berding, Getty Images

Despite our oldest pro soccer team only being 10 years old, one of our cities came in as one of the top 20 best cities for soccer fans.

This ranking was done by WalletHub, who looked at things like minimum season-ticket price for a game, stadium accessibility, and number of championship wins to determine the rankings.

St. Paul ended up ranking as the 16th best city in the US for soccer fans. I was a little surprised! I just have never considered Minnesota to be big into soccer, but I must be wrong.

What appear to be the biggest reasons St. Paul ranked that high are because of how good our soccer teams are.

As for the top 5 best cities for soccer fans, those would be Portland, OR at number 5, then Salt Lake City, Seattle, Orlando, and LA coming in at number one.