The hyper-commercial game we watch today did not arrive by accident. It was built, deliberately, at the 1994 World Cup, in a country that did not even have a major professional league.
FIFA's choice was a calculated one. The target was not the football. It was the largest media and consumer market on the planet. The gamble paid off in a way that still stands out: the tournament averaged 68,991 fans a match, a record no edition has beaten since, and it managed that with only 24 teams.
The real change happened on television. American networks and sponsors wanted American production values. Structured ad breaks, on-screen branding, the whole package. For the first time the global game was built around its commercial inventory rather than the other way around.
The money from 1994 did not stay in 1994. It funded the marketing push behind the modern Champions League and convinced FIFA that market expansion beat tradition every time. Everything since, the branding, the expansions, the breakaway threats, traces back to that summer. You can read it as the moment football was saved, or the moment it was sold. Probably both.