Major League Soccer Aims for Elite Status After World Cup Boost

"Thanks world, We'll take it from here."

That's the message from Lionel Messi, Son Heung-min, David Beckham and dozens of Major League Soccer players in an advertising campaign urging new football fans created by the World Cup to check out MLS.

The slick film showcases World Cup stars who play in the US top flight, inviting fans to join them as the regular season resumes. The league is even offering free tickets to new fans.

"The World Cup has now exposed millions of people to Major League Soccer," says MLS executive vice-president Dan Courtemanche, who joined the league in 1995 before a ball was kicked.

"We're going to continue to capitalise on that momentum."

Could the lasting legacy of this World Cup be the rise of MLS into the band of elite leagues?

Major League Soccer is itself a legacy product from the 1994 World Cup, when Fifa mandated the US to establish a professional league as part of its bid to host the tournament.

The league started in 1996 with 10 teams and zero purpose-built stadiums. Thirty years later, MLS has 30 clubs and almost as many football-specific stadiums.

Despite predictions of empty World Cup seats because of sky-high ticket prices, the stadiums were packed, and broadcast ratings were impressive as football joy spread across the United States - even after the USA were knocked out of the tournament.

The US team's loss to Belgium at the last-16 stage delivered the most-watched football game on one network in US history - with more than 33 million watching on Fox.

England's last-16 win over Mexico became the most-watched football game in US history with a combined 45 million viewers in English and Spanish watching across Fox and Telemundo.

The ratings compare with games in the NFL - what Americans consider football - but are not up to the level of the showpiece Super Bowl.

In 2025, the most-watched Super Bowl in history attracted 127.7 million viewers across English and Spanish broadcasts and streaming in the US, although many Americans tune in solely for the half-time show, which was performed by Kendrick Lamar that year.

MLS, which has shown strong growth since its first season 30 years ago, aspires to become an elite league on par with Europe's top competitions.

"I think we're looked at as the top, one of the top leagues commercially," MLS commissioner Don Garber said at an MLS event to discuss the future of the league and the post-World Cup legacy. "We've cracked that code. Now we've got to crack the rest of it."

In some ways, MLS is already up there with the big leagues across the world.

There were 45 MLS players represented at the 2026 World Cup - including two in the final for Argentina, Messi and Rodrigo de Paul.

MLS has a reputation for being almost a retirement home for superstars - a lucrative place to play for legends like Beckham and Messi after peak careers in Europe.

But that reputation is outdated, Courtemanche says, with the average age of new international players in the league now 23.8 years. Though many of them have dreams of playing in Europe after experiencing MLS.

MLS is changing its calendar in 2027 to adopt a summer-to-spring season, more aligned with Europe to make it easier for players to move between the leagues.

And the competition's leaders are investing in youth development leagues.

All MLS teams run youth academies. As LA Galaxy hosted a viewing party for the US victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina on a big screen, dozens of children ignored the match, instead battling it out themselves on three separate pitches, occasionally running to the big screen when the sound of a goal spread through the crowd.

These were rare pick-up games in a culture full of highly scheduled children - and the skill level was high. Some of the kids played for MLS youth teams.

Eight-year-old Landon - named after US star Landon Donovan - was one of the more skilled, moving from goalkeeper to forward with glee. His mother Jen Wing is a coach and says her children have attended MLS camps and play on travel teams at their home in New Jersey.

Landon dreams of being a professional soccer player one day in MLS.

"LAFC," he says, referring to his dream team.

But critics say MLS will never compete with Europe until it sorts out its "pay-to-play" culture in youth development.

At the top level, MLS academies train and develop youth players for free, much like their European counterparts.

But to get to that level, where an MLS academy team would notice a teenage player, families typically pay thousands of dollars for private lessons and access to travel teams, a common theme in US sports.

MLS officials say the development leagues are constantly evolving and improving when it comes to developing young talent, and that every team has scholarships available to talented players.

Commissioner Garber says the league is always improving and is determined to get even better at developing young players so they can deliver "more and more to the men's national team and just be better, bigger, stronger, faster, all those things that give you energy to think of a better future".

When it comes to attracting audiences, Messi is the league's biggest draw.

But the cult of celebrity runs throughout the league. More than two dozen entertainers and athletes hold ownership stakes in MLS clubs, including Will Ferrell (LAFC), Reese Witherspoon (Nashville SC), Matthew McConaughey (Austin FC) and Magic Johnson (LAFC).

And it's a lucrative business.

Drew Carey was an original Seattle Sounders owner when the club joined MLS in 2009 for a $30m (£22m) expansion fee. The Sounders are now valued at more than $900m (£668m). David Beckham's 2007 LA Galaxy contract included the option to buy an MLS expansion team for $25m. He now owns Inter Miami CF, a club that experts have valued at more than a billion dollars.

But as much as the US is experiencing a football frenzy right now, many believe US culture will always prioritise American football.

Brian Udovich, whose 12-year-old son Croil plays in an MLS Next Level league in Southern California, says many talented youngsters leave the sport for American football when they become teenagers because of all the fanfare.

On Friday nights, American football players get their names up in lights with marching bands and cheerleaders urging them on to glory in giant stadiums. Whereas soccer is typically played on Saturday mornings with mums and dads in folding chairs.

"It just means so much more to other cultures than us," Udovich says.

Michael Bradley, coach of the New York Red Bulls, says American culture is just different and that the legacy of the World Cup will make association football more prominent.

"We don't have the long, storied football history that other countries do. I think for a long time that led to an inferiority complex that maybe football would never really survive in the United States," Bradley told the BBC, adding that now so many more fans in the US feel proud.

"I think we can all unequivocally say in 2026, football is not going anywhere."