The History of Major League Soccer began in 1988, when the United States Soccer Federation pledged to create a Division 1 professional soccer league as a condition to FIFA awarding the 1994 FIFA World Cup to the United States. Major League Soccer was officially formed in 1995. The league began play in 1996 with 10 teams, and in 1998 grew to 12 teams. MLS experienced some difficulties in its first seasons, with the league losing money in the early years, resulting in two teams folding after the 2001 season. MLS has rebounded since then, with increased attendance and the development of soccer-specific stadiums. With an average attendance of over 20,000 per game, MLS has the third highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S. after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB),Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada#Attendance and is the seventh highest attended professional soccer league worldwide.MLSsoccer.com, The expansion, refs, Cascadia: MLS Commissioner Don Garber covers it all in annual address, February 27, 2013, http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2013/02/27/expansion-refs-cascadia-commissioner-garber-covers-it-all-march-soccer-addre MLS currently has 30 teams, with recent expansion team San Diego FC in 2025. As of 2023, MLS is the largest first division professional soccer league in the world by number of clubs.
Background
Major League Soccer is the most recent of three professional men's Division 1 national association football leagues with clubs in the United States and Canada. In the US, with no clubs in Canada, the earliest of such leagues was the American Football Association, which was formed in 1884Murray, C. K. (1910). "History and Progress of the AFA", Official Association Foot Ball Guide, 27. and allied with The Football Association, becoming a member on February 22, 1909, at an FA meeting chaired by Charles Clegg,
The predecessor of MLS was the top-level North American Soccer League (NASL), which existed from 1968 until 1984. The United States did not have a truly national top-flight league with FIFA-sanctioning until the creation of the NASL. The first league to have U.S. and Canadian professional clubs, the NASL struggled until the mid-1970s when the New York Cosmos, the league's most prominent team, signed a number of the world's best players including Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer. Pelé's arrival attracted other well-known international stars to the league including Johan Cruyff, Gerd Müller, Eusébio, Bobby Moore, and George Best. The 1974 NASL Final between the Los Angeles Aztecs and the Miami Toros was televised live on CBS Sports, the first national broadcast of a pro soccer match in the United States since 1968. Despite dramatic increases in attendance (with some matches drawing over 70,000 fans such as Soccer Bowl '78, the highest attendance to date for any club soccer championship in the United States) over-expansion, the economic recession of the early 1980s, and disputes with the players union ultimately led to the collapse of the NASL following the 1984 season, leaving the United States without a top-level soccer league until MLS.
The other professional men's league starting after the NASL folded was the Canada-only Division 1 Canadian Soccer League (CSL), active from 1987 to 1992. During the positioning for Division 1 status, the CSL folded and teams from the three largest Canadian metropolitan areas, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver joined the APSL.
Establishment In 1988, in exchange for FIFA awarding the right to host the 1994 World Cup, U.S. Soccer promised to establish a Division 1 professional soccer league.FRASER v. MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER, 97 F.Supp.2d 130 (D. Mass. 2000) In 1993, the USSF selected Major League Professional Soccer (the precursor to MLS) as the exclusive Division 1 professional soccer league. Major League Soccer was officially formed in February 1995 as a limited liability company. MLS had originally planned to begin play in 1995 with 12 teams.Drew Zuhosky Daily, Major League Soccer: Still Big, Still Bold, Nearly 20 Years Later , December 19, 2012 However, MLS announced in November 1994 that it would delay its launch until 1996 and began with ten teams: Columbus Crew, D.C. United, New England Revolution, NY/NJ MetroStars, Tampa Bay Mutiny, Colorado Rapids, Dallas Burn, Kansas City Wiz, Los Angeles Galaxy, and San Jose Clash. The league had generated some buzz by managing to lure some marquee players from the 1994 World Cup to play in MLS—including U.S. stars such as Alexi Lalas, Tony Meola and Eric Wynalda, and foreign players such as Mexico's Jorge Campos and Colombia's Carlos Valderrama. Before its maiden season and inaugural draft, MLS allocated four marquee players across the initial ten teams.
Major League Soccer with ESPN and ABC Sports announced the league's first television rights deal on March 15, 1994, without any players, coaches, or teams in place. The three-year agreement covered English-language broadcasting for the 1996–1998 seasons, and committed 10 games on ESPN, 25 on ESPN2, and the MLS Cup on ABC. The deal gave MLS no rights fees but split advertising revenue between the league and networks. Univision, Galavision, and UniMás broadcast matches in Spanish. The original Univision deal lapsed after a few years, leaving only the ABC/ESPN networks as the league's national broadcasters.
The early years of the league gave rise to the Bruce Arena-led dynasty of D.C. United, winning the MLS Cup in three of the league's first four seasons. The league added its first two expansion teams in 1998—the Miami Fusion and the Chicago Fire, with the Chicago Fire winning its first title in 1998 to interrupt United's dominance of the championship.
In 1996, the players filed an antitrust lawsuit, Fraser v. Major League Soccer, alleging that MLS's policy of centrally contracting players and limiting player salaries through a salary cap was an illegal conspiracy among team owners. The court ruled that MLS was a single entity and therefore incapable of conspiring with itself, and that the salary cap and other restrictions were a legal method for the League to maintain solvency and competitive parity, and avoid the problems that had plagued the defunct NASL.Fraser v. Major League Soccer, 97 F.Supp.2d 130 (D. Mass 2000)
Early difficulties After its first season, MLS suffered from a decline in attendance. The league's low attendance was all the more apparent in light of the fact that eight of the original ten teams began playing in stadiums owned or rented by American football teams, most of the venues with capacities of 60,000 or more.
MLS experimented with rules deviations in its early years in an attempt to "Americanize" what some viewed as a foreign sport. Some of these rules changes were borrowed from the original NASL, college soccer and high school soccer. MLS implemented the use of shootouts to resolve tie games. These best-of-five contests placed a player 35 yards from goal with five seconds to put the ball past the opposing goalkeeper; if needed the shootout progressed into extra frames. A winning team received one standings point (as opposed to three for the regulation win). MLS also used a countdown clock, rather than a standard progressive clock, with time paused for dead ball situations at a referee's discretion. Halves ended when the clock reached 0:00, rather than at the whistle of the referee as was customary elsewhere.
MLS eventually conceded that the rule changes, particularly the shootout, had alienated some traditional soccer fans while failing to draw new American sports fans as hoped. The shootout and countdown clock were eliminated after the 1999 season. MLS continued to experiment with the settling of tie games in regular season play. In 2000, a 10-minute golden goal period replaced the shootout for tied games, but was abandoned after 2003 after the sudden-death rules were abolished from the Laws of the Game.
The league's quality was cast into doubt when the U.S. men's national team, which was made up largely of MLS players, was eliminated in the first round of the 1998 World Cup by losing to all opponents in the group stage and finishing in last place.
The league began to market itself on the talents of American players, both experienced veterans and fresh talents. Breakout stars like DaMarcus Beasley and Landon Donovan began making names for themselves in MLS before starring for the U.S. national team, while established players such as Brian McBride, Eddie Pope, and Clint Mathis continued to prove their value to both their MLS clubs and the U.S. national team.
The league's ongoing financial problems led to the departure of then-Commissioner Doug Logan in August 1999, with Don Garber, a former National Football League executive, hired as commissioner that same month.Chicago Tribune, Mls Boots Commissioner, Turns To Nfl For Successor, August 4, 1999 Under Garber's auspices, Columbus Crew Stadium was built in 1999, becoming MLS's first soccer-specific stadium. This began a trend among the majority of MLS teams and owners to construct their own venues, abandoning their former stadiums whose main tenants were either professional or college gridiron football teams.
On the field, the early wave of international players who had joined MLS at its inception drifted into retirement or moved on to clubs elsewhere in the world. The run-up to the 2002 World Cup saw a gradual shift in the league's philosophy toward the development of American talent, a move that would eventually lead to success for U.S. soccer.
Major League Soccer lost an estimated $250 million during its first five years, and lost more than $350 million between its founding and the year 2004.New York Times, For M.L.S., the Sport's Future Is in the Eye of the Beholder, November 11, 2005 The league's poor financial condition and declining attendances forced MLS to cut expenses to reduce operating losses. Prior to the 2001 season, MLS owners agreed to freeze team budgets and refrain from signing new expensive players.SoccerTimes.com, MLS fans in several cities wait nervously for contraction decision , December 27, 2001 Also during the winter break between the 2000 and 2001 seasons, reports began circulating that MLS was considering trimming the league from 12 teams back to 10 teams.ESPN.com Soccernet, MLS considering weight-loss program MLS ultimately announced in January 2002 that it had decided to contract the two Florida franchises, the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion. This left the league with 10 teams, the same number as when MLS began. Also, the league reorganized back to the Eastern and Western Conference format after two seasons with the third Central Division.
By 2002, MLS appeared to be in poor condition. Contraction had reduced the number of teams from 12 to 10; MLS was losing money each year; a number of owners pulled out, leaving only three owners in league, with one owner Phil Anschutz owning six teams; and only one team had its own soccer-specific stadium.
Resurgence The 2002 World Cup, in which the United States unexpectedly made the quarterfinals through wins against Portugal and Mexico, coincided with a resurgence in American soccer and MLS.New York City FC, Learn about MLS, MLS Cup 2002, held four months after the 2002 World Cup final, set an attendance record with 61,316 spectators at Gillette Stadium witnessing the Los Angeles Galaxy win their first title. This event held the largest crowd attendance in MLS Finals and second-highest attendance in overall domestic American soccer, after the North American Soccer League championship in 1978, which held nearly 75,000 at Giants Stadium.North American Soccer League Players, Standings, http://www.nasljerseys.com/Stats/Standings.htm