The Lesson MLS Desperately Needs To Learn From The FIFA Club World Cup

The FIFA Club World Cup had plenty of issues, from dangerous summer conditions to matches played before tens of thousands of empty seats.

Even so, in terms of overall sporting spectacle, the competition exceeded most peoples’ expectations. All the clubs – even the disgruntled European powers – took the tournament seriously, helped in no small part by a total purse around $1 billion. The competition finished with an average attendance just under 40,000 per game, which puts it on near-equal footing with the top domestic leagues on earth. And thanks in particular to fans from Latin America and North Africa, the atmosphere at most games was every bit as genuine as a big UEFA Champions League or Copa Libertadores fixture.

Many blasted the event as a contrived money grab, and they have a point. But the outcome underscored this fundamental truth about pro sports: Money grabs can be successful and even lead to sporting progress if they also satisfy a competive need. And the FIFA World Cup clearly did this, giving the majority of a club football world that is too often overshadowed by Europe a chance to compete with the global powers concentrated in the Big Five leagues.

It’s a lesson Major League Soccer’s front office and ownership had better contemplate as it tries to use the momentum created by Lionel Messi’s involvement to move the league forward. And so far, some ideas are far better than others.

Even as the league prepares to celebrate its 30th season Wednesday at the 2025 MLS All-Star Game in Austin, Texas, there are three somwhat consistent criticisms where both MLS fans and American soccer fans who prefer other competitions would like to see improvements:

1. Overall roster quality
2. More meaningful matches
3. More connection to the rest of the soccer world

Short-Term Focus Hinders Long-Term Growth

There are ways to tackle all three desires in ways that can also be financially beneficial to club owners and the league. But too often, such initiatives are so laser focused on the short-term bottom line that they contradict MLS longer-term interests.

One of the best examples is the upcoming Leagues Cup, which for two years pitted every team in MLS and Liga MX against each other, and will pit 18 MLS teams against the entirety of 18-team Liga MX in 2025.

The idea is actually one of the best to emerge on the continent in recent years and helps the two leagues combine their strengths: Liga MX far outperforms MLS on U.S. TV, while American clubs lead most of Liga MX in terms of global visbility.

And the United States-Mexico rivalry has been a defining force of Concacaf Circle for the better part of four decades, making the appeal for even casual fans obvious.

But in both leagues’ desire to maximize short-term revenue, every single tournament match is still played on American soil. While this maximizes ticket revenue by targeting MLS fans in local markets, plus Mexican American fans who can’t regularly see their Liga MX teams in person, it undermines competitive integrity.

The fomat tweak in 2025 should help some Mexican clubs in the league phase of the tournament, but the knockout round still heavily favors MLS clubs. And the result is an event that really doesn’t capture much attention in the markets where those Liga MX teams actually play their league matches, and therefore does not achieve the legitimacy of similar tournaments like the UEFA Europa League or Copa Sudamericana won’t earn that credibility.

Unintended Consequences

Domestically, similar instances in MLS abound. For example, reportedly at Apple TV’s bequest, MLS expanded both the playoff field and the number of Round One games beginning in 2023, in an effort to boost the number of high-leverage games on the MLS Season Pass streaming service each year.

What they actually accomplished was to sabotage previous attempts to make the regular season more meaningful. The format lessens the comparative benefit of finishing first over fourth, as well as fifth over ninth. And it more less assures all but the truly awful teams are in contention until the last month. In the Western Conference, Austin FC has been shut out nine times and sits eighth. In the East, New England has won once since May 7 and is still only eight points out.

Promotion/relegation advocates will assert this is a symptom of a closed system, but it’s only partly true. Liga MX regular season matches have far more urgency despite a playoff system that sees two-thirds of the league qualify, because the playoff structure is tiered to offer more rewards to top-four finishers, and the split-season format gives every league game more meaning. In other words, there were other ways to give Apple TV more playoff games while perhaps improving the regular season urgency, but MLS instead opted for the model that gave more owners a playoff home game.

Then there’s the whole debacle of the league’s attempt to jilt the U.S. Open Cup, presumably because they were no longer directly connected to the marketing or televising of the event.

While MLS isn’t alone in lacking imagination around how to leverage the Open Cup, the distinct lack of interest in using the event to grow exposure in markets outside its own was comically negligent from a long-term business perspective. It only takes a brief look at the event’s history to reveal how it helped contribute to MLS expansion in places like Cincinnati and Orlando.

The FIFA Club World Cup wasn’t perfect. Its organizers certainly had questionable motivations and questionable financiers. But they also took real risks that involved balancing the immediate bottom line with competitive concerns while giving an under-represented portion of the world’s fans something they had long salivated for.

Thirty years after MLS was founded, when soccer is far more in the mainstream in the United States than ever, the league’s leadership and financial backers still seems unwilling to take similar risks and show faith in the fanbase it is trying to cultivate. Until that changes, a large chunk will continue to seek their soccer elsewhere.