When the 2025 MLS regular season kicks off Saturday, the league will have reached an impressive milestone by beginning its 30th season.
That MLS has lasted this long -- more than any other top-flight professional soccer league in the U.S. and Canada in the modern era -- highlights its strongest attribute, its resilience. MLS nearly went out of business in the early 2000s, and in 2001 it contracted the Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny. Since then, though, thanks to savvy business decisions by its owners in terms of expansion, stadium construction and youth academy development, the league is on firmer footing. MLS boasts the world's most recognizable player in Inter Miami's Lionel Messi and its 30th team, San Diego FC, begins play this season.
Given where the league sits, ESPN wanted to understand what MLS might look like in another 30 years. Will it have reached its oft-stated goal of being one of the top leagues in the world? Can MLS make more inroads against American leagues in other sports? If so, how will it get there? Will it have cracked the code on its broadcast rights deals? Will promotion/relegation be part of the conversation? And will MLS be following the rest of the world, or will the world's leagues borrow some practices from MLS?
To answer those questions, and more, ESPN talked to about a dozen sources from a variety of backgrounds in the game, to get a sense of where they think MLS is headed and how it might reach its ultimate destination.
How high can MLS go?
In terms of MLS's current standing in the world, ESPN colleague Bill Connelly recently took a stab at that topic, and concluded that MLS is the "10th-best (or so)" league in the world. With that as a baseline, how possible is it that MLS can continue to climb that ladder? Suffice it to say, opinions vary.
"I would expect in 30 years' time for MLS to be the league of choice," said Nelson Rodriguez, MLS executive vice president of sporting and competition. When pressed, he confirmed that meant being better than the English Premier League. He added that MLS is improving every year, and continues to benefit from having a full generation that has grown up with the league, thus providing a "renewable supply" of fans. "I believe that the infrastructure that exists, not just physical, is the start of the cultural shift that is required to become the league of choice," he said.
Jordan Gardner, the former chairman of Danish side FC Helsingor, is more skeptical.
"I think MLS is going to continue to grow," he said. "I don't think they will ever compete with the top three to five leagues in the world. I think those leagues are just too far ahead in terms of many revenue metrics."
Where there is agreement, however, is that if MLS is going to get to the promised land of "world's top leagues," it will need to evolve -- significantly in some respects.
"I think it can be a top-six league; I think it could be even better than that," said Atlanta United president Garth Lagerwey, who played in the league and has been a team executive for more than 17 years. "But at some point, we'll have to take the risk of, are we going to go forward or not? Are we going to stay where we are in the kind of 10 to 20 range or are we going to make a big push and try to get into that top six? You have to have the ratings, the business metrics that support that. And I think there are things we can do to achieve that."
To spend or not to spend?
If MLS is going to rise up the ranks, at some point it must increase spending on players. Connelly's piece noted that according to Transfermarkt, the Premier League's collective roster is worth approximately 10 times more than Major League Soccer's, and the rosters in the second-tier English Championship are about 1.4 times more valuable, despite both English leagues having fewer teams than MLS' 30.
In terms of salary, the differences are stark as well. According to data published by the MLS Players Association (MLSPA) last September, Inter Miami had the highest annual payroll at little more than $39 million. Toronto FC was second at $32 million. Even Toronto's spend doesn't compare favorably with the top European leagues.
Marco Ottolini, the sporting director of Serie A side Genoa, said, "With this kind of budget, like $30 million, $25 million, [in Italy] you're fighting against relegation."
So how might MLS close this gap? Increased transfer activity will be part of the solution, as MLS has gradually upped its presence in the market throughout the years. According to Soccer America, the recently closed winter transfer window in Europe and South America saw MLS make 30 outbound transfers compared with 15 a year ago. That outbound activity allows MLS teams to increase their coffers and go after players with pricier contracts.
Case in point is Atlanta United, who broke the league record for both an incoming and outgoing transfer fee inside of a year, first with Thiago Almada going to Botafogo last summer for $21 million, and then bringing in Middlesbrough striker Emmanuel Latte Lath for $22 million.
"You have to gradually buy low and sell high, and work your way up the marketplace, so to speak," Lagerwey said. "I like to think that what we're trying to prove in Atlanta is don't put a restriction on the investment and the spend, because if you can sell for $50 million, then you can buy for $50 million and vice versa. So that's the point, though. It's part of a cycle. It's not a matter of MLS teams spending, it's participating in the transfer market."
That also requires investing heavily in youth academies, something MLS has done and figures to keep doing now that the proof of concept of transferring academy products to Europe -- from Chicago Fire goalkeeper Gaga Slonina joining Chelsea for $10 million in 2022 to New York City FC's Christian McFarlane joining Manchester City in January -- has been established.
"For me, they will continue to get better and better," Ottolini said about MLS academy products. "I think physically they are on a very high level and I think also technically."
LAFC co-owner Larry Berg notes that one third of the league's academies are "very young" given that they've been in existence for less than a decade. As more best practices are shared among more teams, the development pipeline figures to expand.
"Thirty years from now, those things are going to be moving along at a much bigger clip in terms of producing professional players," Berg said about the league's academies. "And so I think that's pretty exciting in terms of adding to the growth and just being once again relevant to the national team and to the global ecosystem."
And it won't just be American players heading overseas. MLS players from abroad such as Diego Gómez (a Paraguay international recently transferred to Brighton & Hove Albion for $15 million) and Cucho Hernández (a Colombia international transferred to Real Betis for $16 million) reinforce the reality that going to MLS isn't necessarily the final stop in a career, but can be a steppingstone to bigger things.
Herculez Gomez examines the transfer window transactions for Liga MX and Major League Soccer..
Yet for all that progress, the league's roster rules are widely viewed as a drag on transfer activity. MLS is fond of making its teams put players into various buckets relative to their salaries. Designated players, targeted allocation money, the U22 initiative and an assortment of other roster mechanisms restrict how teams can spend, forcing teams to recruit players who fit into specific age or salary requirements.
Combined with a salary cap, MLS has been able to establish cost controls that have made spending on player salaries fairly predictable, although this arrangement has stifled the most ambitious clubs. There have been calls to loosen up the rules, and complaints that focusing such a large percentage of money on DPs is inefficient, but so far the league has taken only incremental steps.
"They have built a league that is capable of going to the next step and they have the resources to do that, but they're going to have to decide to do it, and it's going to mean getting rid of a system that is antiquated and cumbersome and restrictive and a system that really was built to survive," MLSPA executive director Bob Foose said. "It was not built to excel."
Foose isn't alone. Even Lagerwey isn't entirely fond of how MLS is structured.
"If you allow individual teams more freedom in terms of how they can construct their teams, if we do away with some of the structures that have been in place for the first 30 years, I think you'll get more creativity and innovation and you'll get more efficiency in terms of how we use the marketplace," he said.
That view is shared by Ottolini, who has worked on deals with MLS involving former Toronto defender Domenico Criscito and others.
"I think the rules are a bit too complicated and there are some limitations for the market to compete with European or South America or top clubs around the world," he said. "So I think this is the main obstacle in this moment, and probably if these rules will be more open in the future, the league can become stronger in terms of average level."
Not everyone shares that opinion.
"I recognize I'm in the minority on this, but I don't think that MLS teams should spend more on players," said Bobby Warshaw, a former player in the league and now the director of North America at Bloom Sports Partners, a sports advisory company specializing in strategy and recruitment. "I have not seen a financial model where it brings enough dollars back. And we're in a world where that financial return on sports investment matters.
"There's a lot of positive buzz around this idea of sports finally arriving as an 'asset class.' ... Everyone wants MLS to invest more to capitalize on the Messi effect, but it's a hard financial model to build. Sports investors are happy to spend money to make money. If there was an equation that showed that spending more on their team could make more money in cash flow or enterprise value, they would do it."
Ultimately, any change will have to come from the owners. Sources from around the league paint a picture of how newer ownership groups, such as Miami's, are pushing to have rules relaxed, while some of the longer-time owners, who witnessed the league's near demise, are more conservative.
"I think the roster rules grew this way for a reason, which is to say that we were trying to figure out how to optimize ourselves with a limited capital," Berg said. "And every year when capital gets a little bit less limited, the roster rules evolve and they'll continue to evolve. Someday, do we get rid of most of the rules and just make it one big pool and get rid of all the acronyms? That's certainly possible. It's going to be tied to business performance. Sustainability is very important."
MLS is clearly banking on the 2026 World Cup, which the U.S. is cohosting with Canada and Mexico, to boost its business performance and accelerate growth, but there is concern that not enough is being done to maximize the tournament's presence on American soil. It's why more than one person ESPN spoke with for this story said that it's the next few years that will determine whether MLS reaches most of its goals by Year 60.
"I've been disappointed in how little has been done so far to build on that momentum internally," Foose said in relation to the World Cup. "There's still some time, but in my opinion, there should have been significant moves made over the last 12 to 18 months and then continuing up through the World Cup.
"The system needs to be streamlined, it needs to be opened up. Clubs need to be able to compete better and we need to be able to go out and present to the world a different MLS coming out of the back end of the World Cup than that which was there before. And some of that growth has happened, but in my opinion not enough. And I think as a result we're in danger of not capitalizing on the World Cup in the way that we could have."
Rodriguez countered that the monetization of the World Cup will come on the back end of the tournament.
"We'll look to monetize it mostly at local levels," he said, "creating a connection between the World Cup and MLS at those local levels through players or through our clubs or more broadly through the sport itself."
Solving the media rights conundrum
The big challenge facing MLS teams? How to increase revenue. In terms of game-day revenue, MLS is doing well. Attendance-wise, MLS ranks second in the world, albeit with considerably more teams than any other league. That led Foose to ponder whether the size of the league's stadiums needs to increase. Sponsorships are solid. LAFC co-managing owner Bennett Rosenthal said his team's sponsorships rival that of "the average NBA team." Some clubs, such as LAFC, have proved adept at holding 50 to 60 events in their stadiums outside of game days, adding to the bottom line. Soccer United Marketing, the league's marketing arm, continues to augment its finances.
But nowhere is the revenue divide between MLS and the top leagues wider than when it comes to broadcast rights. (Note: ESPN was an MLS broadcast rightsholder from 1996 until 2022.) MLS is in the third year of a 10-year deal with Apple TV that pays $250 million annually. That amounts to about $8.3 million per team without taking into account production costs. Compare that with the Premier League, where according to the most recent annual report, the broadcast revenues for bottom club Southampton were more than $125 million.
The gap between MLS and other sports' American leagues is even more vast. The NHL's most recent media rights deal with ABC/ESPN and Turner Broadcasting, which runs through the 2027-28 season, is worth more than $600 million per year. The NFL's current deal with an assortment of broadcasters, including ESPN, brings in $10 billion per year.
Former Toronto FC and Columbus Crew executive Tim Bezbatchenko -- who is the director of Black Knight Football Club, an entity that owns multiple soccer teams including AFC Bournemouth -- has seen the impact of that gap.
Herculez Gomez explains why he has concerns about the availability of Inter Miami's stars.
"Now that I'm in the Premier League, and I see how the broadcast rights is able to drive the improvement of a roster directly through continued investment and product quality, we all know that that is going to be a key piece of how MLS teams can become a top league in the world overall," he said.
Neither MLS nor Apple has divulged viewership numbers, but sources around the league suggest that they're not what either side had hoped. MLS gets a 50% cut of subscription fees over a certain threshold, but that hasn't been reached, even with Messi.
"If I were to boil the concept of growing broadcast numbers down to a single thesis, I would say that American sports fans have a straightforward mental model for how they watch sports on TV: It's the best in the world or it's not," Warshaw said. "American sports fans will only tune in if they think you're the best."
So what can be done? Berg added that the league is counting on Apple's history of innovation to accelerate the level of viewership.
"I don't think this is a static situation that's going to be like this for the next 10 years, but I think it's been a good two years," he said.
Rodriguez added that it will require more concentrated marketing efforts.
"Candidly, we have to invest more. We will invest more," he said. "We, the league, will continue to work with Apple so that it uses its channels to highlight and promote MLS, I think more shoulder programming. So it's not sexy or glamorous, but it is more focused and widespread marketing."
Does promotion/relegation fit into the picture?
The question of whether promotion/relegation can be implemented in MLS usually begins and ends with the following argument: MLS owners have invested billions of dollars in expansion fees, first-team players, infrastructure and academies, and its closed system has yielded hefty franchise valuations. According to Forbes, LAFC and Inter Miami lead the way with valuations of more $1 billion. Why would those same owners -- some of whom paid expansion fees of more than $300 million -- risk devaluing their asset by agreeing to promotion/relegation and possibly finding themselves playing in a lower division with plummeting revenues?
It also makes it difficult to plan long term.
"Any executive [who worked in Europe] would tell you privately, off the record, that promotion and relegation makes for bad decisions because you make bad short-term decisions based on what's going to happen over a couple of months as opposed to what's going to happen over a couple of years," Lagerwey said.
Ottolini needed no such anonymity.
"If you start the season and you know that you don't go down, you can plan better in every respect, every respect," he said.
Yet one area where promotion/relegation has an advantage is in the drama it creates throughout the season, especially at the bottom end of the table. It would certainly add more meaning to a regular season that stretches from February through October, and make for compelling viewing. It might well be the catalyst for increasing broadcast revenue.
"I have a general view that whoever does pro/rel first gets a pretty big check from somebody on the TV rights," Warshaw said. "I think the American public's going to be pretty interested in those high-stakes games in pro/rel."
Jeff Carlisle explains why he thinks MLS will eventually increase to 32 teams.
Will it happen in MLS? It seems unlikely, except last week, the United Soccer League not only announced plans for a Division 1 league, but said it continues to look at promotion/relegation. The details have yet to be spelled out, but it could make it for an interesting twist in how the game evolves in this country.
The possibility also leads to another question: What if MLS governed multiple tiers and allowed promotion/relegation? While most people interviewed for this story think that MLS will top out at 32 teams, having multiple divisions would allow the league to add even more. It would also allow MLS to continue to collect expansion fees, which one source said was proving addictive for a league in which many teams continue to lose money.
Will MLS lead or follow?
Because MLS doesn't carry with it some of the historical baggage that its European and South American counterparts do, it has room to innovate in some areas, whether that's using a salary cap, VAR or concussion protocols.
There are instances where other leagues are taking cues from MLS. Promotion/relegation seems to be in deep hibernation in Liga MX, while UEFA is considering a salary cap that would limit clubs to spending 70% of their revenue on player salaries and transfers by 2025.
"Now you're seeing the federations put in place soft salary caps and [profit and sustainability rules] and squad class ratios," Bezbatchenko said. "That's not quite akin to a salary cap, but it serves relatively the same purpose. Maybe not parity or equal opportunity, but the idea is just to create some sustainability for clubs."
It isn't all one-way traffic however. MLS is pondering moving to a European calendar, the better to conduct transfer business with the same cadence that European clubs do, and to avoid breaking teams up in the middle of the season. Free agency remains a hot-button issue for the MLSPA, even as restrictions have loosened in the past decade.
"Without [free agency], I do not think MLS will ever compete with the best leagues in the world," Foose said. "It's too much of a negative drag on players' desire to play in the league. Why would the best players in the world want to come to a league where they have significantly fewer rights than they do elsewhere? It's very simple. It's very logical. If you're going to compete, everything doesn't have to be exactly the same, but you can't be dramatically different than other leagues. It's too attractive to be elsewhere when you have a system that's this restrictive."
The opportunity for MLS is immense, but so are the challenges. The next 30 years stand to be as intriguing and dramatic as the first 30.