Major League Soccer has its next commissioner and he’s already ruled out the one structural change that most European leagues already have in place. Larry Berg, co-managing owner of Los Angeles FC, was voted in by the league’s Board of Governors on the third of August and introduced to the press the following day in New York.
He takes over from Don Garber on the first of January 2027, with Garber staying on as Chairman. At his introductory press conference, Berg was asked whether promotion and relegation is coming to MLS. His answer was close to unequivocal.
Why Berg Isn’t Interested
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for our league,” Berg told reporters. “I just don’t see it happening anytime soon.” If you don’t already know, the MLS operates as a single entity. Player contracts sit with the league itself, rather than with the individual clubs, and so-called owners are technically investor-operators. It’s the model that has kept the MLS solvent whilst earlier American soccer leagues folded. It’s also the biggest reason promotion and relegation doesn’t work in the United States of America. Relegate a club and you’re threatening an investment its owners paid the league to join in the first place.
That investment isn’t small, either. San Diego FC paid $500 million for its expansion slot in 2023, for example. Ask any of the MLS’s 30 owners whether or not they fancy losing that outlay to one bad season and you’ll get the same answer that Berg gave. Berg’s stance echoes Garber’s own message from the July of 2026, when the outgoing commissioner said that he didn’t yet see the case for promotion and relegation, whilst stopping short of ruling it out forever. The ecosystem around the MLS is shifting, though. The United Soccer League is introducing promotion and relegation across its three tiers.
That means that the USL Premier, USL Championship and USL League One will all have a system of promotion and relegation in place from 2028. It won’t touch the MLS directly, but it will give American fans a live example of the jeopardy that Berg says he’d rather manufacture through the playoffs instead. I think that Berg is right that promotion and relegation isn’t realistic this decade. Too many owners paid too much to get in for anyone to vote themselves into relegation risk. That doesn’t mean that it’s off the table forever, though. The longer the USL’s pyramid runs without MLS in it, the harder that will be to hold onto.