In the UK, five-a-side soccer grew from nothing in the late 1980s to become the dominant form of soccer participation in the country — now twice the size of eleven-a-side. The United States is at the beginning of the same curve, with a generation of players, an established participation base, and almost no dedicated recreational infrastructure to serve them.
Before the late 1980s, recreational soccer in the UK meant booking a multipurpose sports hall alongside basketball and badminton players, with no dedicated facilities, no organised leagues of substance, and no serious investment in the adult game.
That changed when purpose-built five-a-side centers began to appear from 1987 onwards. Within a decade, the format had grown from a niche activity into a mainstream leisure sector. The Football Association reported in 2014 that five-a-side participation in the UK had overtaken eleven-a-side football — the national sport — and was growing at twice the rate. Today it is the dominant form of soccer participation in Britain, with purpose-built facilities in every major city and organised leagues running every week of the year.
The growth was driven by a simple proposition: invest in quality facilities, create structured and accessible experiences for the adult recreational player, and attract back the millions who had played at school and stopped. Five-a-side in the UK is genuinely age-agnostic — players from their teens to their fifties participate in the same leagues on the same facilities. Once people start, they rarely stop.
Five-a-side is a game you can enter at five years old and play until you are well into your fifties. That breadth of demographic is what makes it a durable and highly defensible leisure business.
Soccer is the most popular youth participation sport in the United States. In California, it has been among the most popular school sports for close to a decade. Millions of young Americans grow up playing the game — but when they leave school, there is almost nowhere for them to play as adults.
Unlike the UK — where 35 years of private investment have created a dense network of all-weather fields and purpose-built small-sided facilities in every major city — the United States has built almost no recreational soccer infrastructure for adults. The gap between participation intent and playing opportunity is substantial and growing.
In a city like Los Angeles, with 18 million people, finding somewhere to play a casual game of soccer is genuinely difficult. The city is dense, public parks are limited, and dedicated small-sided facilities are almost non-existent. The demand is there. The players are there. The infrastructure is not.
The US small-sided soccer market today is where the UK market was in 1987. The demand is established, the participation base is there, and the infrastructure gap is substantially wider than anything the UK ever had to close.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup — hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico — is the single biggest catalyst the American soccer market has ever seen. The tournament will bring the world's game to American soil on an unprecedented scale, driving participation, investment and public interest to new heights.
Every major World Cup has left a legacy of increased participation in its host nation. The 1994 World Cup in the US directly contributed to the founding of Major League Soccer. The 2026 tournament arrives at a moment when the infrastructure, the talent base, investment levels, and cultural appetite are all aligned in a way they have never previously been.
The generation of young Americans who grew up playing soccer is now in their 20s and 30s — exactly the demographic that drives five-a-side participation. They want to play. The market simply needs somewhere for them to play.
Discuss the opportunityThe 2026 World Cup is not only a sporting event. For anyone paying attention to the American soccer market, it is a starting gun.
The model is proven. The market is ready.
KIX Soccer Centers is developing next-generation small-sided soccer facilities across California, Florida, Georgia and Texas — markets selected for their climate, established soccer participation rates, and the receptiveness of public sector bodies to site partnerships on favourable terms.
The model is the same one that built two UK market leaders: invest in premium facilities, select sites with genuine accessibility, build structured leagues that create recurring weekly participation, and operate with the discipline of a serious business. The UK market supported 89 purpose-built centers across two operators. The United States, with a population five times larger and a comparable trajectory of soccer growth, represents a market of an entirely different order.
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