NEW YORK -- Sprinkled throughout the Major League Soccer headquarters in midtown Manhattan are monuments to what the league has built -- literally.
More than two dozen hard hats sit on two shelves outside commissioner Don Garber's office, with logos from teams like Austin FC and FC Cincinnati. A red shovel inside his office that bears the Chicago Fire FC logo rests in a corner. Garber says he has more shovels, one for each of the stadiums the league's teams have built or renovated: 27 in all.
Key findings: MLS at a crossroads
• MLS said it's spent tens of millions of dollars on ads to capitalize on the World Cup's success in the U.S. • While MLS has 18 of the top 50 most valuable soccer franchises in the world (per Sportico), it's also the 10th-highest-quality league in the world (per Global Football Rankings). • Owners have discussed a desire for a new rights fee in the $400 million to $500 million range, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. • Data shows that most fans of the Premier League do not follow MLS, and leagues are in fierce competition to grow. • One lawyer who advises private wealth funds said MLS is "worst investment" in sports.
"We've been busy," Garber said on a recent afternoon.
The stadiums speak to the staying power of MLS, a league that at times has been a novelty (remember those shootouts?) and at others on life support; the league almost folded in 2001, and a year later six of the league's 10 teams were owned by one man. Now it is a 30-team league bringing in $2.5 billion in revenue. Lionel Messi plays for Inter Miami.
The old joke is that soccer has been the sport of the future here for a generation. When David Beckham arrived at MLS in 2007, Sports Illustrated ran a headline on the cover: "Will He Change the Fate of American Soccer?"
This World Cup, though, really has been something different. In the United States, more than 50 million people watched the men's national team lose to Belgium in the round of 16. "I never thought a round-of-16 World Cup game could get TV ratings like the NFL conference championship games," Garber said. More than 60 million watched the final, the most ever for a soccer telecast.
Now MLS wants to capitalize.
In recent weeks, the league dropped tens of millions of dollars on an ad campaign with this tag line: "Thanks, world. We'll take it from here." It has appeared on TV and across digital platforms and marks the largest marketing outlay in its history, the league said. During the World Cup, teams threw watch parties that drew tens of thousands of people and thousands more took teams up on free ticket promotions. MLS is touting that its 45 players on World Cup rosters played more than 8,000 minutes (the most of any league outside Europe's top five) and that it's flipping its schedule in 2027 to match that of the international leagues.