Will MLS Use Relegation and Promotion? MLS Commissioner Addresses Idea

MLS currently has 30 fixed teams spread across the U.S. and Canada.

Don Garber has been the commissioner of MLS since 1999. | Hannah Foslien/Getty Images

There are 30 MLS teams spread across the U.S. and Canada, 15 apiece in the Eastern and Western Conferences. There are so many clubs that many MLS fans likely cannot name every one, nor can they feel fully encouraged to engage in league play on the whole. MLS Commissioner Don Garber has recently addressed the idea of doing something about it.

Due to the sheer volume of the U.S.’s top flight, the notion of implementing a relegation and promotion system—a merit-based model widely implemented across European soccer, currently used in the English Premier League, the Spanish La Liga and the German Bundesliga, among others—has been raised several times over.

The model not only raises the stakes for the entire season by condemning the lowest-ranked teams at the season’s end to a lower-tiered league of play—and conversely, rewards the highest-performing teams with a promotion to a higher-tiered league—but it also manages and caps how many teams compete in a given league, creating a clear and organized pyramid structure of multiple leagues, instead of having just one oversaturated pool of teams.

For example, England’s top flight, the Premier League, includes 20 total clubs; however the English Football League, the faction situated below the Premier League on the pyramid of English soccer, includes three lower leagues: the Championship, League One and League Two. There are 24 clubs in each of those three divisions for 72 teams in total. That means the Premier League and the English Football League combined have over 90 teams in England and Wales; however, they are well divided, so as to not overpopulate one given pool of play.

The future vision for MLS is once again in question, not only due to the increasing number of expansion clubs but also as the United Soccer League (USL)—a separate men’s professional soccer league in the U.S.—is preparing to launch relegation and promotion in the 2027–28 season, thus prompting Garber to contemplate doing the same.

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What Is Don Garber’s Opinion on Promotion and Relegation for MLS?

The MLS has never used a promotion and relegation system, operating instead as a closed league since it was founded in 1993. | Hannah Foslien/Getty Images

Major League Soccer has operated as a closed and fixed league since it was founded in 1993. The only way a new team can enter MLS is by paying a hefty expansion fee, which these days typically exceeds hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, the league’s latest addition, San Diego FC, paid a record-breaking $500 million to secure their place in MLS for 2025.

Garber, who has served as MLS Commissioner since 1999, however, has acknowledged that this closed model is likely to change in the future.

“Who I am to say it will never happen?” Garber told reporter Andrew Marchand this week.

“Do I think at some generation there will be promotion and relegation in the U.S.? I do. I will say that it is not going to be when we are funding, with billions of dollars of debt, the foundation for soccer in America and Canada.”

It is not surprising, then, that most of the arguments against MLS promotion and relegation come from those who have invested substantial sums to not only secure a spot in MLS—one they do not want to see so easily taken away—but also to build new stadiums specifically for competing in the U.S.’s top tier.

“At some point, the stadium in New York will be just like Yankee Stadium,” Garber added. “It’s just Yankee Stadium, and nobody will care that somebody had to pay a billion dollars for it. Then maybe you’ll have promotion and relegation.”

“I do think at some point it will happen, but it won’t happen while I am commissioner.”

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