The 1994 World Cup still holds the total attendance record (3.57 million). And all the WCs since had 12 more matches. 1994 averaged almost 69,000 per game.
And that was when “no one cared” about soccer. We had no pro league, and the US National Team had only 858,000 viewers in the previous World Cup TV broadcast.
Now we have cities fighting over who gets to pay $100 million for MLS expansion franchises, and the last US World Cup game had 25 million viewers.
It’s not “bandwagon.” USA has soccer support. If the US didn’t, the European teams wouldn’t be trying to so damned hard to crack into our market with TV deals and summer tours. All the big clubs in Europe have been doing summer tours in the US to try and grow their fan base for a decade.