NOT MERGER, BUT NEXT BEST THING
MLS, Liga MX to play 48-team tourney each year starting in 2023
The growing partnership between MLS and Mexico’s Liga MX has given birth to two competitive tournaments and a unique All-Star Game in the last four years, sparking rumors that a merger could be coming soon. On Tuesday the two
leagues revealed what they’ve really been working on: an annual monthlong, World Cup-style tournament involving all 48 teams from the two leagues to debut in 2023.
The competition, an expanded and reimagined version of the 3-year-old Leagues Cup, will be the first major international tournament to feature every team from two top-tier leagues and will require both MLS and Liga MX to pause their respective regular seasons for a month each year.
The creation of the tournament was announced by MLS Commissioner Don Garber and Liga MX President Mikel Arriola at a news conference in New York City. The competition will be sanctioned by CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and its winner will earn automatic qualification to the CONCACAF Champions League round of 16. The second- and thirdplace finishers will qualify for the opening round of the CCL.
“That’s not a merger of the two leagues, but it’s probably the next best thing because all teams will exclusively be playing in a common competition for a month,” said Steven Bank, the Paul Hastings professor
of business law at UCLA and an expert on international soccer. “It also comes at a time when the TV sports schedule is pretty weak in the U.S. and globally in a non-Olympic or men’s World Cup summer, which likely will encourage media partners and sponsors to highlight these games.”
The new tournament is the latest in a series of ambitious endeavors involving the two leagues. In addition to the original Leagues Cup, the final of which will match the Seattle Sounders against Mexico’s Club Leon today in Las Vegas, there is the 4-year-old Campeones Cup. And last month teams from both sides of the border met for the first time in a series of All-Star Game activities at Banc of California Stadium.
Several questions remain to be answered, chief among them the status of the two leagues’ domestic schedules and whether rosters will be expanded to deal with the
crush of additional games.
The eight-month, 34game MLS schedule has grown increasingly crowded in recent years with U.S. Open Cup, the two additional Liga MX competitions, the MLS playoffs and Champions League. The Liga MX season, which consists of two 17-game tournaments plus playoffs, is equally congested. Many players from both leagues also take part in international competitions such as the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the Nations League and World Cup qualifying, appearing in more than 50 games in a calendar year.
Representatives from the majority of teams in the two leagues met at California Science Center in Exposition Park on the eve of the All-Star Game last month to discuss various cooperative ideas, including the expanded Leagues Cup.
For MLS, which has begun negotiations for a new TV deal, the growing partnership
with Liga MX provides exposure to passionate Mexican fans on both sides of the border. The AllStar Game proved that works with 1.6 million viewers tuning in for the game in Mexico, more than double the previous highest audience for an MLS All-Star Game.
For Liga MX, closer relations with MLS gives it access to the lucrative U.S. market.
“The two markets are merged together now,” said Martin Hollaender, chief financial officer for Orlegi Sports, which owns Liga MX franchises in Torreon and Guadalajara and recently opened a merchandizing and business office in Southern California. “It would be natural for us to look for something new in the U.S. We can create quite an interesting product now with the MLS. We could have a more global reach.”