The ever-expanding MLS now boasts 24 teams, with another four on the way – so how big is too big? Canada and the USA’s combined population of just under 350 million can sustain a league of enormous proportions geographically

Don Garber is used to the routine by now. The commissioner of Major League Soccer (MLS), North American football’s top flight, since 1999, is rolled out to make a grand announcement, usually flanked by a grinning billionaire owner, whenever a new team is welcomed into the division. Last month, it was the turn of Austin FC.

Before that, it was Inter Miami, David Beckham’s franchise slated to start play in 2020. And before that, it was FC Cincinnati, who play their first game in just a few weeks. And before that… Los Angeles FC, Atlanta United, Minnesota United, Orlando City and New York City FC. That’s just since 2014.

Austin FC is MLS’s 27th team, with Nashville its 26th and a 28th team set to be announced in the not so distant future. This will make MLS the biggest league in world football, already boasting 24 active teams for the 2019 season. So how big is too big? At what point will MLS stop expanding?

Room to grow the league

The league’s official stance is that there is no final number of teams in mind. They point out the size of North America, Canada and the USA’s combined population of just under 350 million, and how that makes MLS different to the European leagues they are often compared to. “That is unique in world football,” says Dan Courtemanche, the league’s VP of communications. “When you look at England and compare it in square miles and kilometres, it’s roughly the same size as the state of New York. So it’s very different.”

Indeed, it’s true that MLS is, in so many ways, different. There are still so many markets still to be touched upon, like Detroit, San Antonio, San Diego and St Louis. “We have extremely successful entrepreneurs wanting to invest in MLS,” adds Courtemanche. “Look at what Arthur Blank has done with Atlanta United. This is not something that happened in the first 15 years. Early on, the question was over whether MLS would survive. Now the only question is how much is the league going to thrive?”

Not everyone is happy with the current direction of MLS, though. In fact, 2018 was a year of reflection for American soccer as a whole, with a presidential election contested almost entirely on the structure and governance of the sport in the country. “I think there’s a real danger in over-saturation and dilution,” says Kyle Martino, the former USA international and MLS midfielder turned TV pundit who ran for US Soccer president in 2018. “I would argue to owners and Don Garber, who I give a lot of credit to, that if profit or growth is what you’re after then there’s a better business strategy.”

Martino is a self-confessed advocate of a promotion-relegation format, something that has been debated in North American football for over a decade. “The Premier League broke away to create a new division designed and geared for major clubs, but it didn’t close the door and stop that incredible sports story of climbing the divisions to potentially one day be the champions of the first division,” he says. “Leicester City at 5000/1 doesn’t happen unless the Premier League allows for true promotion-relegation.”

The subject of promotion-relegation has become something of a toxic one in North American football circles. Tribalism has tainted the debate, with certain figures on social media becoming unrelenting trolls, harassing anyone with a different viewpoint to their own. “The foaming mouth promotion-relegation mob… their insults and attacks, the pitchfork yielding behaviour, towards the subject makes it impossible to have very mature and high level discourse,” says Martino.

Identity

Over the years, there has been very little middle ground. However, the time might be coming whether finding a middle ground is a necessity. Could MLS really function as a single-tier league with 30 or more teams? Geographically, North America, being an entire continent, would be able to sustain this, but at what point is the sporting aspect considered?

MLS has such a grip on North American football it seems unlikely that it will concede some of that control by becoming part of a pyramid, even if it puts itself on top. Instead, what seems more feasible is that MLS gets to a point where it splits into two divisions, with promotion and relegation between them. Imagine 30 teams in total, split into two leagues. Others, like Martino, want the whole system opened up, true mobility between all the organisations with a finger in the North American soccer pie.

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The growth of football’s Stateside appeal is best illustrated by the rapid expansion of MLS. As recently as 2003, the league consisted of just 10 teams. Now, just over 15 years later, 17 further expansion slots have been handed out, with an 18th coming soon. But with every new team MLS edges closer to a moment of reckoning. How big is too big? MLS might not have an answer right now, but it could be forced to come up with one soon.