Article by Geoff Nudelman (@nvdel)
There are few bigger physical and literal landmines in American soccer than when entering the conversation about relegation and promotion.
Considered standard practice amongst most of the world’s club structures, the United States hasn’t adopted it in Major League Soccer (MLS) and neither has any other American sport league. As the league celebrates 20 years since its first match and expansion heading to 24 teams by 2020, then a projected 28 teams in the years to follow, the conversation about promotion & relegation has crept back into the forefront.
Almost every outlet big and small has covered the topic, with many more offering long-winded hypotheticals about how it might work. Others take a much more frank approach, such as a recent Sports Illustrated article where MLS head coaches use words like “far off” and “impossible” about the system ever coming to the league.
In its current form, organized, high-level club soccer is much newer to the country than its four other major leagues. As a result, MLS followed suit with what was successful in football, basketball, baseball and hockey. This meant creating “East” and “West” divisions with a playoff structure that leads to a regular season champion and a league champion at the end of the playoffs.
As I introduced in my prior piece, there are two primary leagues below MLS. The issue being, the NASL (2nd) and USL (3rd), have significant dropoffs in attendance, facilities and revenue (The PDL is really more of a development league and isn’t included in most pro/rel conversations). While essential to the success of MLS, the gap between 1-2 and 2-3 is much more significant than in most leagues around the world. It represents the first of many major roadblocks.
Proponents of a pro/rel model argue that increased competition would make each league better as MLS owners would spend to keep their club in the top division, while successful NASL and USL clubs would have a new target beyond a title each year.
An additional topic that hasn’t been covered as closely is how pro/rel would affect American clubs entering the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL) competition. The CCL system currently has four American clubs and one Canadian club in each year (MLS covers the US and Canada). Competition starts in August, breaks in October, and then resumes in March with the final in late April or May.
Beyond the fact that MLS runs on a counter schedule to CCL competition (which is a conversation in itself for another time), it’s unclear if a pro/rel model would include four or five MLS slots and how the scheduling would work. Again, proponents would argue that this would increase the value of CCL for MLS clubs and result in MLS teams regularly making the final and winning the competition (only two MLS clubs have made the final in its current format and none have ever won it).
Although it’s America’s longest running soccer competition, The US Open Cup is far down the priority list for most MLS clubs. It does have some bearing in all of this, but much less than a regular season or CCL trophy.
The answer very well may be that there is no answer. Promotion/relegation is a great idea in theory, but the obstacles to get there are very present and very real. Expect this conversation to only get louder as more major markets enter MLS and the reshuffling of the lower leagues moves forward in earnest. If the American Soccer Pyramid begins to open and MLS has 28 teams, in, say, 2026, then it’s very possible a bad season from a New York team could have them playing a 2027 away match in Oklahoma City.
