MLS Commissioner Don Garber had plenty to say regarding the future of the league during MLS All-Star break in Columbus this week.
As the league paused for the festivities in the days leading up to the commencement of Leagues Cup 2024, all of the stars from around the division showed off their skills before falling 4-1 in the All-Star game to the Liga MX All-Stars.
But it was matters off the pitch that grabbed the headlines as Garber made some strong statements about future expansion clubs joining MLS, U.S. Open Cup, and more.
With San Diego FC set to join MLS as the 30th club for the 2025 season, we will see the “end of expansion for a period of time,” Garber said.
Yet that did not stop the commissioner from revealing the Indianapolis could be the next city set to make a bid for expansion.
There is no specific timing in place,” he said. “Mayor Joseph Hogsett was at one of our MLS All-Star events, he came to New York and met with us in the league office, and the folks in Indiana are bullish about an MLS team Indianapolis. We’ve expanded by about 20 teams over the last 25 years, so we understand how to manage this process.”
Furthermore, Garber outlined some of the necessary criteria for expansion, plus the staggering sums of money that it could require down the line.
“What we look for is what we’ve looked for in every expansion process. You need a great stadium project. You need support from the community, both in the business and political communities.
“You need to have an ownership group that really believes in Major League Soccer and what it can do for a city. Those elements are the elements that are being worked on now.”
After San Diego paid $500 million to gain entry into the league, Garber revealed that the steep cost of joining has already increased. “It’ll be more than $500 million,” he said.
Meanwhile, the future of the historic U.S. Open Cup has been a hot topic among the American soccer crowd as of late.
After MLS announced its decision to only enter eight senior teams into the competition for the 2024 season, plenty of criticism was directed at the league.
At the time, Garber explained that MLS needed to better manage the fixture congestion for its teams.
“Everybody in the soccer business [needs] to rethink how competitions have been organized to ensure that we can continue to evolve and manage what is the single-biggest issue for all professional soccer, and that’s the management of our schedule,” he said.
Fast forward to this week, and Garber revealed where he stands on the future of the competition after months of dissenting voices.
“I understand that it was an unpopular decision that we made,” Garber explained. “And we decided based on what we think is in the best interest of our players and our clubs.
“Frankly, when we think about the pyramid, when you have lower-division teams that are playing games of importance, when they’re playing up, we wanted MLS NEXT Pro teams to have more games of importance and play up.
“We would have been more than happy to play those games against USL clubs. We have to make decisions as it relates to the health and safety of our players.”
Finally, Garber opened up on potential changes to the roster rules in Major League Soccer as some clubs pine for the freedom to be more ambitious financially.
We spend a lot of time analyzing and talking through committees and our ownership about competitive balance,” Garber outlined.
“I think one of the great offerings that MLS has is its competitive balance; on any given day, any team could win. We’ve had eight different teams win MLS Cup over the last ten plus years.
“There’s about a two-and-a-half times delta in spending between our high and our low, but we still have great competitive balance. We haven’t seen any impact from money spent affecting the competitive balance in the league, and that is something that we care a lot about.”
