I don't think you can call soccer comparable, most everyone in the US knows the game and can follow it, few have any clue about cricket and most find it baffling. I suppose it will come down to if they can get enough people interested in learning a game just so they can spend money on watching it. Soccer got fairly big for a few years (at least in flyover country) but that was right when the fad of pretending to be injured after being fouled/faking being fouled was at its peak and that sort of behavior is right up there with intentionally injuring another player by the US view, the worst offenses and antithetical to the US idea of good sportsmanship.
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The lack of connection between the youth game and the pro game was always striking to me, particularly when the youth game became popular in a time when social mobility was on the decline in the U.S.
You could play Little League (baseball) and dream of being Babe Ruth but you could not play soccer and dream of being Pele because that happened in a different country and the path up just didn’t exist, just as many people were perceiving that paths up in general had disappeared.
I would say that people of my generation and particularly a bit younger have kept the love for the game and play pick-up soccer as an adult but I think the gap between the youth game and interest in the pro game is diagnostic of something.