Lionel Messi Inter Miami CF celebrates after winning the Eastern Conference Final on Saturday night. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
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The 2025 MLS Cup final is set, and it as star-studded as any in the league’s 30-year history.
Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami sealed their place in next Saturday’s league championship match by romping visiting New York City FC 5-1 in the Eastern Conference Final. And the squad that also boasts Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba and Luis Suarez will host Thomas Müller and a Vancouver Whitecaps side that earned an impressive 3-1 Western Conference Final win at San Diego FC.
In any of the first 27 MLS seasons, the prospect of the world’s greatest living player squaring off against one of his former World Cup foes would’ve seemed certain to shatter previous TV viewership records.
But with MLS three years into its pact with worldwide streaming partner Apple TV, it now faces the possibility that the numerous ways viewers can tune in will make it far more difficult to ascertain how many people actually watch. It’s a strong possibility the traditional Nielsen TV ratings for the game won’t surpass some previous MLS Cup finals, even if the audience in aggregate is larger.
Multiple Options
In the United States, the game will be available on network TV in English on Fox and on cable in Spanish on Fox Deportes. But just like every other game shown by one of the league’s lineal broadcast partners, it will also be simultaneously available via the Apple TV app. In this particular case case it won’t even be behind the Apple TV+ or MLS Season Pass paywalls.
Largest MLS Cup Final U.S. TV Audiences
- 1997: 2.22 million (D.C. United vs. Colorado Rapids)
- 2022: 2.15 million (LAFC vs. Philadelphia Union)
- 1996: 2.11 million (D.C. United vs. LA Galaxy)
- 2016: 2.01 million (Toronto FC vs. Seattle Sounders)
- 2018: 1.77 million (Atlanta United vs. Portland Timbers)
From the outside looking in, the apparent impact has been not only been the fragmenting of MLS Cup final audiences, but likely the overall shrinking of it.
MLS Cup Final U.S. TV Audiences, 2022-24
2022: 2.15 million (LAFC vs. Philadelphia Union)
2023: 890,000 (Columbus Crew vs. LAFC)*
2024: 468,000 (LA Galaxy vs. New York Red Bulls)*
*Does not include Apple TV streaming data
The measured viewership for the 2023 final on Fox and Fox Deportes was less than half of that for the 2022 final on Fox and Univision. The 2024 audience on those channels was considerably smaller still.
No doubt, some viewers have migrated to Apple TV. But the decline is so precipitous that it’s impossible to believe that the overall American audience size has been in the same neighborhood as in 2022.
Foggy Data
Further, MLS and Apple TV struggled in the first two years of the partnership to provide data that gave a real clear picture of audience size and trends, both for games like MLS Cup finals or for more run-of-the-mill league fixtures.
They’ve taken some steps forward in Year 3, with MLS Commissioner Don Garber revealing some (admittedly vague) regular season viewership data back in July, and the league in October announcing its 2025 regular season slate had seen a 29% increase in aggregate audience from the season before.
That suggests the league now has the capability to eventually let the public know how many viewers will be watching Messi and Müller square off in South Florida, even if the turnaround time is a bit longer than Nielsen’s TV numbers. Given the amount of people you’d expect to tune in for Messi vs. Müller, it’s probably wise to expect the league to issue some supplemental data if Nielsen’s numbers are underwhelming. And if they don’t, it would be the clearest sign yet that the streaming first is dampening the league’s overall visibility, even while it attracts more stars.