As I reported in another post, MLS is officially the fastest-growing sport in America, especially among younger fans, and it has spread to new parts of the country quickly in the last decade.
Despite this, there are still vast swathes of people in America hundreds of miles from their nearest MLS team, and many states do not have an MLS team at all.
This is one of the negative effects of being such a big country, but it also means there is plenty of room for soccer to grow in the USA. Whether it gets so big that MLS needs to introduce a second league and start using the promotion and relegation system, or add a 3rd conference, is yet to be decided, but we are bound to see more states launching MLS teams in the future.
As it stands though, there are more states without an MLS team than with one, so which are they? Which parts of America have been left behind to suffer in the absence of a soccer club to support?
A List of American States With No MLS Club
As of 2024, there are 29 US states which do not have an MLS club.
In alphabetical order, they are:
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arkansas
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Vermont
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
At first glance, this might seem like a poor endorsement for MLS, but there is an awful lot more to it than that.
Interestingly, 24 of these states do not have a professional sports club representing them in any of America’s biggest sports leagues at all. So no NFL, NHL or MLB team either. These are all American sports through and through, so thing aren’t quite as clear cut as they may appear.
Across all sports in the US, there are some teams that represent a city and some that represent the state as a whole. Some states have multiple teams in the same league and others have none. It’s a big place, and the way the population is distributed has a huge impact on what is and isn’t possible.
Many Americans feel represented by a team close to them even if they are not technically in the same state. The Kansas City Chiefs (NFL) are a good example of this. Kansas City itself is split by state lines, so it is in both Kansas and Missouri, and the Chiefs’ stadium is on the Missouri side, but people from Kansas would still consider them to be their team.
So while some of the states on this list may not technically have an MLS team situated in them, the MLS fans in some of them may well feel as though they have a local team.
Do Some States Dislike Soccer?
I don’t think that’s the reason.
While it’s true that certain parts of the country are sport mad and others aren’t that interested, or they prefer some sports over others, the reasons behind the lack of countrywide MLS coverage are more to do with population numbers and density.
The majority of states with no MLS team are also the emptiest, and this cannot be a coincidence.
If you take Alaska, America’s least densely populated state with just 1.6 people per square mile, you can understand why an MLS club would probably never work there. Their biggest city is Anchorage with a population of under 300,000 people, and thee are only 735,000 people in the whole state, which is also the largest in America. Alaska will never be able to support an MLS team, even if the people there loved soccer.
Wyoming is another state with a low population (about 585,000) and low density at just 6 people per square mile. Not only that, but there is not a single town or city in the state with a population over 100,000. So the people are really spread out. It’s not just that it couldn’t support an MLS team, the state couldn’t support a large franchise in any sport.
Then there are tiny states like Rhode Island. Although the population density here is much higher at 1,018.1 people per square mile, the total population of America’s smallest state is only 1.1 million. They have New England Revolution right on their doorstep in Massachusetts, plus New York Red Bulls and New York City FC just along the coast. Their other neighbouring state, Connecticut, has 3x the population so if another team was to be created in the area it would more likely be there.
There are a few states with larger populations that could support an MLS franchise, New Jersey being the biggest with a population of around 9.3 million. That said, they border New York and also have Philadelphia Union just across the river on the other side in Pennsylvania, so the people of New Jersey aren’t exactly short of soccer options. Despite not having a club based in the state, the people of New Jersey have very good access to MLS clubs.
Is MLS Really an American Sport?
Can MLS really claim to be a sport for the whole of America when so few states have a home team to support? Just 42%, in fact.
Actually, yes it can.
When you think of American sports, your mind will either go to baseball (MLB), ice hockey (NHL), or more probably, American Football (NFL). Events like the NFL Superbowl and the MLB World Series can make it feel as though the whole country follows these sports. If you don’t know much about them though, it might surprise you to know that many states don’t have their own MLB, NHL or NFL teams either.
So MLS isn’t all that different:
| League | Number of States Without a Team |
|---|---|
| NFL | 28 |
| NHL | 29 |
| MLB | 33 |
| MLS | 29 |
In fact, as the table shows, MLS can claim to be active in more areas of the US than baseball and just as many as ice hockey. American Football is represented more heavily but only by one state, and with MLS potentially expanding to 32 teams in the future and Indiana hustling for one of those slots, it could end up being the biggest sport in the country by state coverage.
Considering the issues so many states have with supporting a franchise in the first place, this really is encouraging for MLS and soccer in America as a whole.