As Philadelphia traversed from late afternoon to late evening on the first Saturday of November, the fanatics who hold the citys sports teams dear watched as their and their to lose baseballs World Series.Philly earned the distinction, if one wishes to call it that, of becoming the first American city to lose two major sports championships on the same day.Did it really, though?One of the championships occurred in , which has staged the World Series since 1903 and once owned such an e sential place in American culture it became known as the National Pastime.The other occurred in , which was launched in 1996 in the face of many preexisting notions about the sport held by a large swath of mainstream American sports fans. Al Woods Jersey They demeaned soccer for decades as dull, foreign, and even for reasons that remain elusive given the Soviet Unions meager accomplishments in the game communist.Tough day for Philadelphia fans. Phillies lose the World Series Union lose the MLS Cup SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) That hostility didn't prevent what's been a steady upward ascent both on and off the field. After a 40-year spell without a World Cup, the USA men's team is now a regular participant. The USA women's team is the world's No. 1 side and perennial World Cup contenders. Meanwhile, MLS filled the vacuum for a significant pro mens league in this country, and the NWSL became the first major pro womens league to survive and endure after two predece sors collapsed.In the proce s, a soccer culture has slowly taken root in America and what was once considered a niche sport is showing signs of being anything but that. It leads to a different question nowadays: Is soccer big enough to be considered the fifth major sport on the American landscape?As the , has soccer grown sufficiently to warrant a spot in this conversation? Seattle Seahawks Pet Gear The core four sports -- NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL -- represented the scene into which I was born and grew as a sports-obse sed boy into a sports-obse sed journalist. It was the experience of nearly every fan in the U.S. today over the age of 45. When I joined The Sporting News as a columnist in 1995, our magazines mi sion was to cover the major team sports: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college football, college basketball. That was it at the time.It appears to be different now, dramatically different, and Philadelphia 2022 is an ideal venue to ponder the transformation. Elias Sports Bureau, a leading provider of statistical and historical information regarding North American sports which does work for both MLB and MLS, declared that the 2022 Philly Phailure was the first of its kind.The sun shone on the Phillies so much that the Union werent comparable except and this is a big but there was constant mention of Phillies and Union, Phillies and Union. Including, for example, Jay Wright would say, Im watching the Union and watching the Phillies, sportswriter told The Sporting News. And its not like there were two distinct audiences. That I can tell you for sure.Being at the Union home playoff games and being at the Phillies home World Series games Im not saying the same people had the same tickets, but after the Phillies adopted Dancing on My Own as a theme song, when the Union won, the whole stadium was singing Dancing on My Own. Its the same people. In that way, soccer has just grown. Its not a niche sport. Its part of the mainstream.Jensen has an informed idea of the difference, because he was one of the few U.S. sports journalists who were in Trinidad nearly 33 years ago, when Paul Caligiuri scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory that qualified the USMNT for the World Cup for the first time since 1950. He knows exactly what soccer as an American afterthought looks Ryan Neal Jersey like.I believe its got a bigger base now, today, than hockey, Jensen said. All these years of every kid growing up playing soccer and these years of all these leagues coming into our living rooms, barrooms, etc. that has all hit critical ma s. You see it. You see it in the stadiums. I believe that soccers decision to go to soccer-specific stadiums and create these real soccer palaces has just worked. There were spectacular environments both for the Union and LAFC during MLS Cup playoffs . So people are drawn in and want to be part of it. Soccer in America is different, more diverse, than the four established major team sports, which have been the province of one specific league at the profe sional level. Its the NHL for hockey or MLB in baseball, but soccer here is not limited to MLS (men) or the NWSL (women).The most popular league from a numerical standpoint is Liga MX, which has a devoted following with Mexican ex-pats and their progeny at its core and can be seen on 10 different cable and streaming outlets because of the uncommon way the league markets Nigel Warrior Jersey its rights. The Mexican national team has drawn nearly five million fans in over 100 matches played on U.S. soil since 2003.Englands Premier League has an impre sive audience on NBC's channels, with the attracting more than 754,000 followers and . Those are for teams nearly 3,500 miles away.ESPN, through its cable channels and its streaming service ESPN+, regularly broadcasts league games from five different countries and a dozen competitions. Fox Sports has the rights to the mens, womens and youth FIFA World Cups and televises league games from the U.S. and Mexico acro s its various platforms.Multiple streaming services have seized upon the pa sion of American soccer fans to help build their busine ses. Next year, Apple TV+ will begin showing every MLS game globally as part of a 10-year, $2.5 billion contract the league signed that incentivizes both parties to grow the leagues audience. There will be games available on what we now view as traditional television, but the Apple deal is a big bet for MLS on the younger demographic and its embrace of streaming.CBS's Paramount+ paid $1.5 billion to secure the rights to the UEFA Champions League and the a sociated le ser UEFA competitions. Paramount also has deals with Italys Serie A and other North American nations (outside of the USA) to televise World Cup qualifying. The Peacock streaming platform is a huge part of NBCs $2.7 billion investment in the Premier League. The Prems $540 million annual American side hustle is close to what the NHL earns from its national TV deals with ESPN and Turner Sports.Consumption of profe sional soccer in the U.S. is at levels unimaginable just a few C.J. Prosise Jersey years back, Mac Nwulu, ESPN a sociate director of communications, told TSN.With the exception of the World Cup and Womens World Cup, you will not find a single soccer game that on its own produces ma sive ratings. The average ESPN audience for MLS telecasts was 343,000, and there are typically 507,000 watching Premier League games on the various NBC broadcast platforms