Despite the nay-sayers that want to see soccer fail in America, Friday's friendly World Cup rematch between Brazil and Colombia was a further showing that there is a market for the sport in the United States.

The game drew a record crowd of 73,429 fans to Miami's Sun Life Stadium.

Not a bad crowd for a city that many sports fans perceive to be a weak sports town.

Soccer fans in the U.S. made their presence felt during the 2014 World Cup, with ESPN broadcast platforms (ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC) averaging 4,557,000 viewers for the English broadcast of the 64 matches, with ratings increasing by 36 percent over the 2010 South Africa World (3,273,000 viewers) and 96 percent from the 2006 Germany World Cup coverage (2,321,000 viewers). Univision also pulled in strong numbers, averaging 3,543,000 viewers for their Spanish-language telecasts, a record for the network with a 34 percent increase in viewership compared to the 2010 South Africa World Cup.

ESPN's and Univision's numbers are difficult for networks and advertisers to ignore, putting up average ratings on par with the 2014 National Basketball Association (NBA) Playoffs (4.9 million viewers across 89 telecasts on the ESPN networks, TNT and NBA TV), the 2013-14 college football bowl season (5.6 million for 35 telecasts on the ESPN networks, CBS and FOX) and the 2013 Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason (6.3 million for 38 telecasts on FOX, TBS and MLB Network).

U.S. fans also showed a willingness to travel to get their soccer fix, with Americans having purchased 196,838 tickets, according to Forbes.com, second only to host nation Brazil (1,363,179) and far ahead of soccer-obsessed nations Argentina (61,021), German fans (58,778) and England (57,917).

"It's going to take time, it's not going to be instantaneous," said Sunil Gulati, president of the United States Soccer Federation and a FIFA Executive Committee Member during the Bloomberg Sports Business Summit. "I used to say that every four years, America falls in love with a gymnast or a speed skater or whatever and then they forget about it. That's not what's going to happen here, that's not what's going on. The sport is too important and too big in the United States already to not be able to build on this."

For the latest sports news, follow @LatinPostSports on Twitter

The success of the U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT) has been key for the growth of soccer in America. While the USMNT has been nowhere near making the championship game, the U.S. soccer program has come a long way since hosting the 1994 World Cup.

Prior to the 1994 World Cup, the team was not even good enough to qualify into the quadrennial tournament, having participated only four times (1930 Uruguay World Cup, 1934 Italy World Cup, 1950 Brazil World Cup, and 1990 Italy World Cup) before getting hosting rights in the mid-1990s.

"Soccer really took a hold in 1994," Luke Dempsey told Latin Post.

Dempsey is the author of the book "Club Soccer 101", which covers the history of traditional European and South American powerhouses such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Boca Juniors and Corinthians as well as the rise of the sport in Africa, Asia, and America for those new to the sport.

"People are getting this game and the nuances. They're cheering in the right places," Dempsey said. "They know the players, they know where they play. To me, it's fantastic. It's very different from when I arrived in 1995. I really stood out as an English guy who came to America and couldn't see any soccer. Now, I see games that my friend in England can't see. I get more soccer on TV here than he does. If I want to see a game, I have plenty of options. It's changed a lot, and a lot of that has to do with the national team. Each time this happens, every four years, you have another gang of people who become a fan of the game. It's changed a lot and I think it's here to stay."

Since 1994, the team has advanced past the Group Stage four out of the last six World Cups, making it as far as the quarterfinals in 2002, including overachieving in this year's tournament. Team USA managed to get out of the "Group of Death", which included eventual champion Germany, Portugal (with 2013 FIFA Ballon d'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo) and Ghana, which had eliminated the U.S. in the two previous World Cup tournaments.

"This is a tough competition. There are 209 countries that play, so when you win the World Cup, you're really the best in the world. It's not a sport where five or 10 countries are just playing," said Gulati. "We got extraordinary resources at our disposal, 320 million people in the country with millions playing [the sport]. We have extraordinary infrastructure, a league that's growing rapidly. So I think you put all those pieces together, we're getting there. And the fact that we didn't do better than 2002 isn't relevant. There are five countries in this century that have played in three of the World Cups and gotten to the second round. The U.S. is one of those, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Argentina, it's a pretty small group. Now we haven't broken to that last level of being able to stand toe-to-toe with Argentina or Germany -- we won't talk about Brazil after this summer -- but we're getting there."

Major League Soccer (MLS) hopes to capitalize on the success of the World Cup much like they have in the past, with the league having been founded as a condition for the United States to host the 1994 World Cup, launching their inaugural season in 1996.

The growth of the league has not been without its growing pains, almost folding in 2002 after having to contract the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion franchises, while losing $350 million between 1996 and 2004.

FOR MORE SOCCER NEWS, VISIT LATINPOST.COM'S SPORTS PAGE

But the American soccer league rebounded strongly since those dark days, with MLS recently signing a new eight-year deal with ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision worth a combined $720 million dollars, increasing their broadcast rights by five times from their previous agreement. ESPN and Fox Sports will share the English broadcast rights to MLS games as well as USMNT's game and the United States Women's National Team games (USWNT) -- paying a combined $75 million per year ($600 million). Univision retained their Spanish-language broadcast rights coughing up an average of $15 million per year ($120 million), according to SportsBusinessDaily.com.

The lucrative TV deal comes on the heels of adding a second team in the New York City market, New York City FC (owned by English Premier League champions Manchester City and Major League Baseball's New York Yankees), and the Orlando Soccer Lions, both launching in 2015 as well a team in Atlanta, with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank buying a club set to play in 2017. The league is also expected to team up with David Beckham and Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure to bring MLS soccer back to the Miami area.

MLS's has also seen growth in attendance, averaging 18,608 fans and surpassing the NBA (17,347) and the National Hockey League (17,720). Recent research by Brazilian consulting firm Pluri found that MLS's Seattle Sounders FC soccer club has the third-highest average attendance in the Western Hemisphere at 43,124 fans per game, only trailing Argentina's Primera División club River Plate (49,368) and Club America of Mexico's Liga MX (44,567). Folha de Sao Paulo also noted that the 2013 MLS Cup had a higher attendance (18,743) than their country's title game (14,951), with the American league putting up better attendance numbers than Campeonato Brasileiro Série A.

"We have had a 100 sellouts so far this season, it'll be a record for us," said MLS Commissioner Don Garber during the Bloomberg Sports Business Summit. "We have teams like Kansas City, Salt Lake and Vancouver selling out every game. Salt Lake is the smallest market of our 19 teams and they have had 20 sellouts in a row."

"The connection with the community, either the fact that owners are doing the right things, the fact that players are making a good living, the fact that we have great broadcast agreements and even better ones going forward with Fox, ESPN and Univision are part of the fact that the sport is growing," he added. "It's taking its time. We're not trying to crack the code to have soccer be the most important sport in the world or in the United States. We just want to continue to do what we are doing, which is grow carefully and incrementally. And as the country has millennials becoming more important, [and] the Hispanic population exploding, we are in a good spot to be able to capture that opportunity."

FOR MORE SOCCER NEWS, VISIT LATIN POST.COM'S SPORTS PAGE

WANT TO HEAR MORE FROM EDWIN? LIKE HIM ON FACEBOOK

Related