There have been eight MLS Cup winners in the last 10 years — a stark contrast to the hegemony of many top European leagues — but is MLS’s competitive balance hurting its growth? 📝 samstejskal
“The obvious problem of Major League Soccer is that, while it has a reasonably loyal following, a significantly loyal following in many parts of the country in terms of people going to the games, its television presence is hopeless,” Szymanski told. “There is no major professional league in the world that does not rely on television as its primary source of income. This remains the major challenge.
When it comes to fan engagement, MLS is a hyperlocal league. Even calling it a regional competition feels like an overstatement. In order to generate the TV revenue it needs to achieve its goal of becoming one of the top leagues in the world, it needs to develop a real national following. For MLS, there aren’t easy answers to any of those questions. That makes it difficult for big, overarching narrative arcs to develop, which, in turn, creates a higher barrier to entry for the new fans that MLS needs. ‘Everyone has a chance’ as the main selling point really isn’t working. Nothing is surprising when everything is unpredictable.
Part of the reason for MLS’ lack of an elite is time. Though now in its 27th season, MLS is still significantly younger than its competitor leagues in the U.S. and Canada and abroad. It can take generations for real fandom to develop, decades for true, narrative-shaping teams to form. Some of the teams that have legitimate potential to grow into that kind of club — LAFC and NYCFC, for instance — haven’t even existed for 10 years.
But much of the randomness of MLS is by design. The roster rules and league structure were created to control costs and ensure that the bigger budget teams can’t dominate year after year. The tight margins in individual seasons and extreme mobility between them are features, not bugs. The structure also doesn’t incentivize really going for it in the regular season. With the championship decided by a single-elimination playoff tournament that half of the league qualifies for, there’s not a huge cost to coasting through the regular season.
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