How Manchester City are looking to crack £860m US code after New York and WWE moves

While to some this summer’s pre-season games in the United States might be meaningless, to the clubs involved they are anything but.

In the build-up to the 2024/25 Premier League season, many clubs from English football’s top flight will be heading across the Atlantic to try and take a slice of a market that is booming right now.

Back in 1994, when the US first held the World Cup, the response was relatively lukewarm stateside. While a nice thing to be able to host the world’s biggest tournament, the sheer popularity of American football, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey over ‘soccer’ meant that the kind of cut-through that might have been hoped for just didn’t happen.

The MLS was born after USA 94, and while the hope was that it would soon join the likes of the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB in popularity, it didn’t manifest itself in that way. Even with the star power of David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Thierry Henry in later years, it still never quite managed to break through and claim a real share of a passionate, sport-loving America.

But recent years have seen things changing. Many of the Premier League’s 20 clubs have either US ownership or touchpoints with US capital in some way, and US money sees the direction of travel when it comes to valuations long-term.

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With the World Cup being held in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2026, the interest is bubbling up to levels never seen before, backed up by the willingness of NBC to pay £2bn for the rights to show the Premier League. That figure will rise when the next cycle comes up for tender, buoyed by the increased exposure of the game and the successful