MLS try to capitalize on World Cup

To try to capitalise on the surge in interest from the World Cup, Major League Soccer has launched its largest-ever marketing campaign called “Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here”, featuring MLS stars past and present, including Lionel Messi and David Beckham. It aims to convert America’s growing legion of football fans into loyal followers of the country’s top professional league as its season resumes on July 16.

MLS, which launched in 1996 as a condition of the US’s bid to host the 1994 World Cup, faces a pivotal moment. The arrival of Messi at Inter Miami in 2023 drew unprecedented attention to the league. Even before the World Cup, viewership and match attendance increased in recent seasons.

As part of efforts to build on this momentum, the league is shifting to a summer-to-spring calendar in 2027 to align with the international football schedule. Currently its season runs from late February to early December. This change, alongside roster rule tweaks, aims to integrate MLS better with the global player transfer market.

Don Garber, 68, is widely viewed as the chief architect of US football. He sits on the board of US Soccer and has served as MLS commissioner since 1999. He steered the young league through a near bankruptcy in 2001. Under his leadership, MLS has expanded from 10 to 30 teams and built 26 football-specific stadiums.

Club owners have invested more than $11bn in football infrastructure in North America since the league’s inception. This laid the foundation for the US’s 2026 World Cup bid, as 12 MLS clubs hosted national teams at their facilities for the tournament. Eighteen of the world’s 50 most valuable football clubs now compete in MLS, according to Sportico, more than in any other league.

The MLS has no promotion or relegation, protecting clubs from the financial catastrophe of losing top-flight status. Through a multibillion-dollar deal with Apple signed in 2022, MLS became the first sports league to put all of its games on a single streaming platform.

“This [the US] is the golden market for soccer globally. Fifa [is] seeing this with massive, unprecedented attendances, unprecedented revenues,” Garber told the Financial Times. One of the US market’s particular strengths is the “high-end” hospitality and engagement with fans “in ways that the rest of the global football world doesn’t necessarily either pay the same amount of attention to, or have it [as] part of their culture of attending a game”, he added.

On the pitch there are challenges, however. MLS still lags behind Europe’s top leagues and contends with the perception that it is a retirement home for the continent’s ageing stars. In recent weeks, 37-year-old former Bundesliga legend Robert Lewandowski and 35-year-old Frenchman Antoine Griezmann have signed to play in Chicago and Orlando respectively.

Another early World Cup exit has forced a fresh round of soul-searching over what is preventing the US from becoming an elite men’s football country. Many point to the high cost of playing youth football in America, where annual fees for amateur clubs run into the thousands of dollars and have largely confined the sport to affluent suburbs.

Garber acknowledged these issues, telling the Pink ‘Un that the US needed “more access for more players” and to “solve this concept of pay-to-play”. MLS has overhauled its development model in recent years, with the launch of MLS Next in 2020 as the top youth football development programme in North America.

Players in MLS club academies do not pay to participate but Garber said such changes to the development model “take a generation to deliver”. In April, private equity firm KKR made a strategic investment in MLS Next Pro, the reserve league for MLS clubs which serves as a bridge between the academies and first teams.

As part of a joint venture, KKR plans to move MLS-affiliated Next Pro teams into new markets, with the aim of building brands and supporting local stadium development. “More than 100 cities across the US and Canada don’t have a professional soccer club, despite strong interest from communities and local leaders,” KKR partner Ted Oberwager told the FT.

Despite MLS’s best efforts, American fans could still gravitate towards top European leagues, which are more accessible than ever on US television and streaming platforms. After becoming a World Cup sensation in the US, Haaland could pull his newfound American audience back to his English Premier League side, Manchester City. But Garber is confident that greater support for European clubs in the US won’t come at the expense of the MLS.

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion. Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs. An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...

Spurs CEO attacks luxury training base

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance. Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected. “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.” He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...

The Political Economy of Football V2

Search This Blog