Major League Soccer owners voted this week to name Los Angeles F.C. co-owner Larry Berg as their next commissioner — the man they hope will lead the league into the future and nearer to long-held ambitions of prominence among American sports fans and global soccer leagues.
Berg will officially become the first new MLS commissioner in 27 years on Jan. 1, 2027, after a transition period with outgoing head Don Garber.
In his decades on the job, Garber oversaw the league's glow-up from a cash-poor 10-team afterthought to the full-sized, mature league it is today, complete with 23 soccer-specific stadiums and youth academies for every team.
"I've experienced this sport as a player, a fan and owner, and now with tremendous humility as commissioner," Berg said at an introductory press conference Tuesday. "Every one of those experiences has reinforced the same belief: The future of Major League Soccer has never been brighter."
The transition comes at a pivotal moment for MLS, which is hoping for a boost to attendance and ratings in the wake of this summer's FIFA World Cup in North America. Next year, the league will shift its long-time season calendar to a summer-to-spring schedule to align with Europe's professional leagues. Ahead lie other challenges that have game-changing potential for the league, including looming labor negotiations and the expiration of the current media rights deal with Apple TV in 2029.
Around 125 candidates were considered for the job before owners voted among finalists this week to select Berg. His professional background is in private equity, and LAFC, the team he's been with since its founding in 2014, which is widely regarded as one of the most capably run franchises in MLS.
Read on for more:
Who is Larry Berg?
Berg is known best in the soccer world for his co-ownership of Los Angeles FC, which debuted in 2018 and has quickly become one of the league's most successful franchises. Under Berg's co-ownership, the team has won an MLS Cup and a U.S. Open Cup and has twice finished as the league's best regular-season team.
Berg has also served as co-chair of the league's Sporting and Competition Committee, the body that oversees rule changes, such as the forthcoming calendar switch. "That was way before he had the ambition to be commissioner, and he brought to that role an entirely modern and forward-thinking perspective as to where the product could be on the field," Garber said Tuesday.
What is his background?
Berg, who is 60, grew up playing soccer. On Tuesday, he recalled joining a youth league as an 8-year-old in his hometown of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 1974. (Back then, there were only two teams in the league, so they played each other every weekend, he joked.) He was an accomplished high school player who competed in a state championship against future Sporting KC head coach Peter Vermes. Berg was an early megafan of Major League Soccer who attended the Los Angeles Galaxy's inaugural home game in 1996.
Berg studied economics and business at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and then at Harvard University. Ultimately, he pursued a career in private equity, becoming a senior partner at the firm Apollo Global Management, one of the world's largest private equity firms. Berg says he will divest his ownership stake in LAFC in order to take the job as commissioner.
Asked Tuesday about how his background in private equity would inform his approach to the job, Berg said he believed it would be an advantage. "It's about a sense of urgency. It's about rolling up the sleeves, being in the trenches, asking good questions, aligning people toward a common goal," he said.
What is Berg's vision for MLS?
In 2020, Berg boldly predicted that soccer and MLS would surpass baseball and hockey to become the No. 3 sport in the U.S. behind football and basketball. On Tuesday, he said he still believed in that vision.
(A recent Gallup poll found that professional soccer ranked in the middle of the pack when respondents were asked whether they were a fan of a wide variety of sports, including the major American professional and college sports, along with Olympic sports like figure skating. In terms of pro sports, soccer finished behind football, basketball and baseball but ahead of ice hockey, tennis and golf.)
"As we look ahead five to ten years from now, I hope people won't simply say that Major League Soccer got bigger. I hope they'll say it got better — better competition, better player development, stronger clubs, deeper connections with supporters, greater success internationally, and a league that inspired more young people across North America to fall in love with this game," Berg said Tuesday.
To accomplish all that, he said, the league must start by improving the quality of the on-field game.
"I would say that's my No. 1 job," he said. "We will have more transfer revenues, and we'll have more media money, and that'll all lead to better product on the field. And that will become a flywheel, because it leads to more transfers and more revenue money and more media money."
What are the big challenges ahead?
There's been a lot of chatter in the MLS world about the league's current roster rules and spending restrictions, with owners eager to simplify regulations and allow for more spending. Those changes will likely be subject to a negotiation with the MLS players' union, whose current contract is in place until Jan. 31, 2028.
The other big item is the league's media rights deal. Right now, MLS earns about $250 million per year from Apple TV, the streaming provider that carries every MLS game (with some games simulcast on Fox and its suite of channels). League leadership believes that number could be significantly higher in the future.
"It's about finding media partners that want to co-create the future with us. It's about co-creating. It's about what's interesting to them, what's interesting to us," Berg said Tuesday. He raised the possibility of changing "certain things to [a media partner's] benefit," citing the controversial World Cup "hydration breaks" that allowed broadcasters to air valuable commercials during games.
What does he think about promotion and relegation?
This one's for the soccerheads.
Some vocal fans have called for implementing a Europe-style promotion-relegation system in U.S. soccer. Supporters of the idea believe it would incentivize lower-performing teams to remain competitive to avoid relegation to a lower division. Investors and team owners generally oppose the idea, because relegation can be a financial disaster for teams, and they want to protect their multimillion-dollar investments.
On Tuesday, Berg was directly asked about the idea.
"I don't think it's a great way to build the league. I don't think it's a way to get stadiums built and to get training facilities built and to have owners invest in rosters and all the other things you need to do," he said. "I just don't see it happening any time soon."
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