End of an Era: Nearly 40 years later, MLS and US Soccer moves away from ESPN
The league announced a new broadcast deal with FOX Sports on Tuesday, supplementing its streaming-focused contract with Apple through 2026.
All good things must come to an end, and also begin.
When Major League Soccer was born in 1996, it had a home on ESPN when few other media outlets would give voice to the Beautiful Game on North American shores.
Through the years, the Worldwide Leader in Sports has propped up the nascent and expanding soccer league in a country of more than 330 million people, bringing the most international game with a distinctly North American flavor to its people.
No American voices have championed the growth of the domestic game quite like JP Dellacamera, Jon Champion and Taylor Twellman, among the many other broadcasters who had stints on-air as ESPN personalities, under the watchful eye of soccer connoisseur and former ESPN executive and president John Skipper. Without these voices, MLS doesn’t become what it is today.
But all good things must come to an end.
More than 35 years after that first relationship was struck and ESPN began broadcasting MLS, the U.S. national teams and a bevy of women’s pro leagues from WUSA to WPS to the current NWSL, the Worldwide Leader in Sports is backing out of the race.
MLS announced a new broadcast television deal with FOX Sports on Tuesday, a partnership that will stretch through the television giant’s run with the United States, Canada and Mexico-based men’s World Cup in 2026, that — in addition to the league’s historic multi-billion dollar deal with Apple — marks a new era in the league’s carriage.
That, in addition to concurrent deals with Spanish-language TelevisaUnivision in the U.S., and TSN and RDS in Canada.
“We are proud to continue our partnerships with FOX Sports, Univision and TSN, and we are pleased to have MLS matches on RDS in Canada,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in a statement from the league. “These broadcast industry leaders continue to demonstrate their deep commitment to MLS and soccer.
“Our linear agreements, along with our partnership with Apple, are the culmination of a series of collaborative discussions to provide our fans with the most expansive and accessible lineup of programming MLS and our sport in the U.S. and Canada have ever seen – and by a significant margin.”
The new deal will feature 34 regular-season matches per year on FOX and FS1, with at least 15 of those broadcasts appearing on the over-the-air flagship broadcast channel, in addition to eight playoff matches and MLS Cup on the main channel from 2023 through 2026.
Every match will be simulcast in Spanish on FOX Deportes, in addition to FS1’s coverage of 16 early-round Leagues Cup matches.
"We’re proud to extend our longstanding partnership with Major League Soccer at a truly exciting time for the sport here in the United States,” said Eric Shanks, CEO and executive producer of FOX Sports. “There is no soccer league in the world better positioned for growth and with FOX’s unrivaled reach we are fired up to be a part of it."
In many ways, it’s a boon to broadcast coverage of the sport, which also includes the Apple deal that will feature wall-to-wall MLS coverage every weekend on a distinct Apple TV channel for $14.99 a month or $99 a season, with discounts for current Apple TV subscribers.
No local blackouts. No geofencing. No restrictions due to national television, including FOX broadcasts. Just pure soccer, including an MLS-produced Saturday whiparound show marketed as the NFL RedZone of American soccer.
The $2.5 billion deal over the next decade will help the league grow, and the financial ramifications can’t be understates.
Of course, there are plenty of reasons ESPN didn’t re-sign with MLS and U.S. Soccer. The broadcast giant recently plucked away the Southeastern Conference from CBS on a monster deal that it must now guarantee programming for arguably the biggest name in college football.
The Worldwide Leader is also leaning further into the NBA, and Monday Night Football continues to be among its biggest properties (and biggest costs for rights) to stay in with the 800-pound gorilla of sports that is the NFL. Even with ESPN’s vast array of channels and resources, that inventory requires outlets, both in broadcast and streaming.
Soccer’s low rating on over-the-air broadcast television have traditionally paled in comparison to other sports in the country.
But is there a cost of moving away from the traditional broadcast home of the sport? In addition to U.S. Soccer moving both the men’s and women’s national teams to Turner/HBO/Warner Bros. Discover Sports, 2023 will mark the first time ESPN has not broadcast an American soccer match in nearly 40 years.
The eight-year deal will also include rights to the domestic-based U.S. Open Cup, and is worth $25-27 million per year, according to The Athletic’s Paul Tenorio and Jonathan Tannenwald of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The National Hockey League underwent a similar growth from 2004-2021, when the league left its traditional home of ESPN to partner with NBC and Versus. The struggles were felt enough, with ESPN sometimes (rightly or wrongly) blacking out all but the most pivotal hockey news and highlights from its programming, that the league moved back to ESPN at the start of the 2021-22 season, with digital rights flowing to the subscription-based ESPN+ service and an additional package of games for Turner’s TNT.
After just shy of 20 years in the wilderness, hockey found its way back to ESPN. Will MLS do the same?
Only time will tell. But if it does, here’s a hunch: it won’t take 20 years for Major League Soccer to find a new accord with the WWL.