There’s no better time to stress-test the thesis that Americans were irreversibly beguiled by the World Cup than this weekend, when a new Premier League season gets underway and soccer converts can reunite with their summer heroes.
Having shipped off 169 of its players to North America in June, the EPL was the most-represented league in the World Cup, and while many of the sport’s biggest stars suit up for one of the continental associations (Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich), the new season offers an opportunity for stateside fans to reconnect with the tourney’s undisputed topliner. Last seen bearing a $750 alcoholic taxidermy raccoon as he deplaned in Oslo, Erling Haaland is about to rampage back onto our screens for his fifth season with Manchester City.
If so much as 2% of the U.S. TV audience for the England-Norway quarterfinal match (27.1 million) tune in for Saturday morning’s Manchester City-Bournemouth opener, USA Network and Telemundo will double last year’s average EPL delivery (535,000 viewers per match across all NBCUniversal platforms) without breaking a sweat. A Scandinavian volcano deity who’s also really good at social media, Haaland became the breakout star of the World Cup with his berserker seven-goal performance and endearingly goofy internet capers.
