Major League Soccer saw a significant drop in its linear television audience for MLS Cup despite a matchup between two teams in the country’s biggest television markets.
LA Galaxy’s 2-1 win over the New York Red Bulls on Saturday averaged 468,000 viewers on Fox and Fox Deportes, according to multiple reports, down 47 percent from the championship game’s combined linear audience of 890,000 in 2023.
The slide is alarming for the league, even though MLS has a partnership with Apple TV to stream its games on the MLS Season Pass app. Though Apple does not release viewership numbers, a source briefed on the numbers said overall viewership including streaming was down — though not by 47 percent.
The championship was also up against college football, and the change in college football scheduling this year didn’t help MLS’ numbers.
The 2023 MLS Cup, a 2-1 Columbus Crew win over LAFC, was also featured on Fox and Fox Deportes. Last year’s contest was matched up against the Army-Navy football game, and this year’s MLS Cup went head-to-head with the SEC championship game.
Army-Navy had 7.2 million viewers in 2023. The Georgia-Texas SEC championship game averaged 16.6 million viewers across ABC and ESPN this year, peaking at 19.7 million viewers. It was the most-watched college football game of the season.
MLS’ viewership on Fox this year, excluding Fox Deportes, was 427,000. That number fell well below the NWSL Championship’s record 967,900 viewers on CBS last month. The NWSL final was played Nov. 23 in prime time with an 8 p.m. ET kickoff. Notably, the MLS numbers also lagged behind the second-division USL’s championship game, which kicked off at noon Nov. 23 on CBS and averaged 431,000 viewers.
Though the league was certainly disappointed about the lackluster showing for MLS Cup, it pointed to upticks in audience on linear TV in the regular season on Fox and TSN in Canada and increases in viewership in the regular season and playoffs on MLS Season Pass.
“We always want our championship game to be a spectacle and get the audience we believe it deserves,” said Seth Bacon, executive vice president of media at MLS. “This year we have a lot to be excited about and a lot to be proud of as we look to go into the 2025 season. Our regular-season (viewership) was up, our playoffs were up, our attendance was up, our average watch time was up.”
GO DEEPER
MLS Cup final showcased the league. Now, MLS must decide what’s next
Should MLS be concerned?
Absolutely.
Even with the Apple deal, MLS should be worried its television numbers on over-the-air Fox have dropped so significantly. MLS largely struggled to pull in significant TV numbers in the preceding years, or at least numbers that competed with other major men’s sports leagues, which was part of the reason they were willing to move to a streaming service when the deal was up at the end of the 2022 season.
Still, MLS Cup remained a marquee event that typically could break through to wider audiences. The 2022 MLS Cup, the last championship game before MLS partnered with Apple, generated 2.155 million viewers in the United States on Fox (1.487 million) and Univision (668,000). It was the most-viewed MLS Cup since 1997.
Now, those MLS Cup numbers have continued to slide in the wrong direction.
With little idea of what subscriber or viewer numbers look like for the MLS Season Pass app on Apple, it’s impossible to put the full picture together. But, despite that, or in part because of it, the league’s reputation also continues to take a major hit, reinforcing some of the marketing and perception problems it faces as it tries to build wider audiences beyond its local markets.
(Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
