Major League Soccer has been broadcast live in the United States nationally since the league's inception in 1996 and in Canada since 2007. As of the 2023 season,

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

is the primary global rights holder and will stream every regular season and playoff match on MLS Season Pass – a new service on the

Apple TV app The Apple TV app (also known as Apple TV, TV, and the TV app) is a line of media player software programs developed by Apple Inc. for viewing television shows and films delivered by Apple to consumer electronic devices. It can stream content ...

. Some matches will also be broadcast on television via

Fox Sports Fox Sports is the brand name for a number of sports channels, broadcast divisions, programming, and other media around the world. The ''Fox Sports'' name has since been used for other sports media assets. These assets are held mainly by the F ...

in the United States, and

Bell Media Bell Media Inc. (French: ) is a Canadian company formed by the amalgamation of several companies. Establishment (2011–13) On December 9, 2011, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan announced the sale of its majority stake in Maple Leaf Sports ...

(via TSN and RDS) in Canada.

United States television

1990s–2006

Major League Soccer with

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

and

ABC Sports ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Televisi ...

announced the league's first television rights deal on March 15, 1994, without any players, coaches, or teams in place. The three-year agreement covered English-language broadcasting for the 1996–1998 seasons, and committed 10 matches on ESPN, 25 on

ESPN2 ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially fo ...

, and the

MLS Cup The MLS Cup is the annual championship game of Major League Soccer (MLS) and the culmination of the MLS Cup Playoffs. The game is held in November and pits the winner of the Eastern Conference Final against the winner of the Western Conferen ...

on ABC. The deal gave MLS no rights fees, but the advertising revenue was divided between the league and networks. During the 1990s,

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...

and

Galavisión Galavisión is an American Spanish-language pay television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. The network is unrelated to the earlier Mexican channel of the same name, though both broadcast Televisa-produced programming. As of February 2015 ...

broadcast matches in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

. The original Univision deal ended in 1999.

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is owned by Comcast. It provides content nationally with pr ...

picked up MLS in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

, but disputes over time slots led to the network dropping MLS after the 2001 season. ABC and ESPN were left as the only MLS broadcasters in 2002. In 2003, Fox Sports World (later

Fox Soccer Channel Fox Soccer (formerly Fox Soccer Channel & Fox Sports World before that) was an American television specialty channel specializing in soccer, owned by Fox Corporation, which operated from 1997 to 2013. It formerly broadcast rugby and Australian r ...

) also became an English-language TV partner to MLS, while Fox Sports en Español became the Spanish-language partner in the same year.

2007–2014

In August 2006, MLS and ESPN announced an eight-year contract spanning 2007–2014 giving the league its first rights-fee agreement worth US$8 million annually. The deal gave the MLS a regular primetime slot on Thursdays, televised coverage of the first round of the

MLS SuperDraft The MLS SuperDraft is an annual college draft for teams of Major League Soccer in the United States and Canada. It takes place in January and is used by teams to select players who have graduated from college or otherwise been signed by the l ...

and an expanded presence on other ESPN properties, such as ESPN360 (now ESPN3) and Mobile ESPN. The agreement also placed each season's opening match, the MLS All-Star Game and the MLS Cup on ABC. In September 2006, the media announced a deal between the Univision network and

Soccer United Marketing Soccer United Marketing is the for-profit marketing arm of Major League Soccer which primarily deals in the promotion and sanctioning of professional soccer in the United States. In 2016, Soccer United Marketing was also chosen as the exclusive ...

(SUM) worth US$80 million. The network agreed to broadcast 25 MLS matches per season, ten U.S. men's national team matches and five international matches operated by SUM; although, ratings were volatile. Disappointing ratings led to a 2008 push by ESPN to bolster its popularity through measures such as using JP Dellacamera, a veteran play-by-play soccer commentator, instead of baseball announcer Dave O'Brien, as well as an arrangement to simulcast MLS matches in Spanish on

ESPN Deportes ESPN Deportes (, ''ESPN Sports'') is an American multinational Spanish-language pay television sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications ...

, with the intention of gaining additional Hispanic viewers with a Spanish style. ESPN programming executive Scott Guglielmino explained: "From my perspective, the only question in my mind when it comes to growth is how quickly over time MLS and its management group want to spend on players ... You’re in a worldwide market. The question is how quickly the ownership group wants to push that envelope." After two years of low ratings, network executives decided to transfer all ABC matches to ESPN. The

had been broadcast on ABC each year from 1996 to 2008, but with ratings declining from 1.4, in 1996 and 1997, to 0.6 in 2008, the MLS Cup was moved to ESPN at the start of 2009. The network also replaced the regular Thursday night telecast with a "game of the week" on either Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday nights, to give MLS matches better lead-in programming and more flexibility to air better matchups. In 2011, Fox Soccer Channel and MLS agreed to a one-year extension to televise up to 31 regular-season matches and three playoff game, in a deal worth around US$7 million. ''MLS Wrap'' was a MLS highlight show that aired on

that was often hosted by Sean Wheelock, with analyst John Harkes. In 2012,

NBC Sports Group NBC Sports Group is a division of NBCUniversal that is responsible for NBC Sports' media properties, encompassing the NBC television network's sports division as well as day-to-day operation of the company's sports-oriented cable networks and oth ...

replaced Fox Sports as the league's second English-language broadcaster, with matches airing on NBCSN (which was available in approximately twice as many homes as Fox Soccer), and selected matches on the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

broadcast network. NBCSN broadcast 44 matches and NBC broadcast 5 matches—the average combined audience for NBC and NBCSN's matches in 2012 was 122 percent higher than the average audience for Fox Soccer's matches in 2011. ESPN ratings also increased in 2012 from the prior year, as a number of MLS matches were shown on ESPN in 2012, instead of a primary focus on ESPN2, as had been the case previously.

2015–2022

On May 12, 2014, MLS announced an eight-year broadcasting deal between ESPN and Fox Sports in English, and Univision in Spanish, covering television, digital, and the possibility of radio rights. The biggest change under the new deal was the establishment of a consistent national window for each broadcaster; UniMas airs matches on Friday nights, while ESPN2 and

Fox Sports 1 Fox Sports 1 (FS1) is an American pay television channel owned by the Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. FS1 replaced the motorsports network Speed on August 17, 2013, at the same time that its companion channel Fox Sports ...

air matches on Sunday evenings and nights respectively (jointly promoted as ''Soccer Sunday''). All three broadcasters will air at least 34 regular-season matches per-season during these windows. ESPN and Fox Sports will also share in English-language coverage of the playoffs, and alternate airing the All-Star Game and MLS Cup yearly. Univision will air Spanish-language coverage of the MLS Cup and All-Star Game, and exclusively air two playoff knockout-round matches per season. Matches exclusively televised by Univision include English-language commentary via

second audio program Second audio program (SAP), also known as secondary audio programming, is an auxiliary audio channel for analog television that can be broadcast or transmitted both over-the-air and by cable television. Used mostly for audio description or oth ...

. The deal also includes options for national radio rights for ESPN Radio and Fox Sports Radio, rights to United States men's national team matches for all three broadcasters, rights for

ESPN International ESPN International is a family of sportscasting and production networks around the world. It was begun in 1989, is operated by ESPN Inc. and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Operating regions Latin America Spanish-speaking countries * ES ...

, and an option for ESPN to take over the distribution of the league's out-of-market package. ESPN and Fox Sports pay a combined $75 million per season, and Univision pays $15 million per-season. In Canada TSN and TVA pay a combined $15m per season. Totaling at around $105 million per-season, nearly five times the value of the league's previous deal, it is the highest-valued television rights deal in MLS history. Commissioner Garber stated at the announcement that the new contracts were "another strong indicator of the League's continued growth and the overall fan interest in our sport". In March 2017, it was announced that

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

had reached a deal to stream English-language coverage of the nationally televised matches allotted to Univision. The streams would include interactive features, while MLS also announced that it would stream a news program known as ''Matchday Live'' on its Facebook page to complement the new deal. Prior to the 2018 season, ESPN invoked its option to take over the out-of-market streaming rights to Major League Soccer. The MLS Live service was discontinued, and out-of-market matches became an overall component of the new ESPN+ subscription streaming service that launched in April 2018 (with MLS Live temporarily made available for free prior to the service's official launch).

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

replaced Facebook as the English streaming rightsholder for Univision's matches under a three-year deal. The 2018 season also saw significant developments in regional broadcast rights, as Chicago Fire and newly established Los Angeles FC chose to sell their regional television rights exclusively to subscription streaming services (the aforementioned ESPN+, and

YouTube TV YouTube TV is an American streaming television service operated by YouTube, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. Announced on February 28, 2017, the virtual multichannel video programming distributor offers a selection of live linear channel f ...

, respectively), rather than a local broadcaster or regional sports network. Several teams (including

Real Salt Lake Real Salt Lake, often shortened to RSL, is an American professional soccer franchise based in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. The club competes as a member club of Major League Soccer (MLS) in the Western Conference. RSL began play in 2 ...

and the Seattle Sounders FC) also reached in-market streaming deals alongside a flagship television broadcaster. In 2019, D.C. United similarly signed with

FloSports FloSports is an over-the-top subscription sports broadcaster and streaming service. The company is based in Austin, Texas, United States, and was founded in 2006. FloSports streams live sporting events to audiences around the world. History La ...

(replacing

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...

), however the partnership was met with criticism over the more-limited availability of the broadcasts, as well as promised supplemental coverage that never materialized. The team broke away from FloSports prior to the final game of the season, and re-signed Sinclair for the 2020 season. Also in 2020, Chicago Fire FC returned to regional linear television with a multi-year deal with WGN-TV, concurrent with the final year of its agreement with ESPN+.

2023–2032

MLS requested that its teams not negotiate regional television rights beyond the 2022 season, suggesting that the league was considering switching to a centralized model for its broadcast rights (more akin to the NFL and European club leagues). On June 14, 2022, MLS announced a 10-year broadcasting deal with

taking effect in the 2023 season, under which the company will hold the global over-the-top streaming rights to all MLS and

Leagues Cup The Leagues Cup is an annual association football competition between clubs from Major League Soccer and Liga MX in North America. It debuted in July 2019 with four teams participating from each league. The first edition was a single-eliminati ...

matches, and selected MLS Next and

MLS Next Pro MLS Next Pro is a men's professional soccer league in the United States and Canada that is affiliated with Major League Soccer. It launched in 2022 with 21 teams and will expand to 28 in 2023. The league comprises 27 reserve sides for MLS clubs ...

matches. They will stream on a new subscription service called MLS Season Pass which will be offered exclusively through the

. Season Pass will be a separate offering from Apple's main streaming service

Apple TV+ Apple TV is a digital media player and microconsole developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is a small network appliance hardware that plays received media data such as video and audio to a television set or external display. Since its secon ...

, but a package of MLS and Leagues Cup matches will stream for Apple TV+ subscribers, and a subset of these matches (potentially over 40%) will be available for free. Season ticket holders for MLS teams will also receive free access to the service. The acquisition is Apple's second major foray into sports broadcast rights, after having acquired a package of Friday-night Major League Baseball games for Apple TV+ in 2022. Under the deal, MLS will assume the production of all match telecasts, teams will no longer be allowed to sell regional broadcast rights, and no match will be subject to blackouts. Commentary will be available in English and Spanish, as well as French for matches involving Canadian teams. The majority of matches will be played on Wednesday and Saturday nights, with scheduled kickoffs potentially occurring at 7:30 p.m. local time. Although Apple will hold the rights to all MLS matches, the league stated that it was still exploring a linear television package. Every match will be called on-site, preventing scenarios in which teams and broadcasting networks have called games remotely. Fox Sports and Fox Deportes will air matches in English and Spanish, respectively, on linear U.S. TV: 34 matches in the regular season, eight in the postseason, and each MLS Cup until 2026. ESPN and Univision will no longer be involved in the televising of MLS matches, with ESPN severing ties after being the primary partner for the league's entire history and Univision having done so in the 1990s and from 2007 to 2022. Univision, however, will televise select

matches, including exclusive linear coverage of the final. Both ESPN and Univision are believed to have left negotiations due to conflicts over the Apple contract; in addition to both companies operating streaming platforms of their own ( ESPN+ and Vix respectively), Jonathan Tannenwald of ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...

'' reported that ESPN disagreed with Apple putting the games which would have been part of an ESPN sublicense deal outside of the MLS Season Pass paywall, while Josh Sim of SportsPro Media speculated that Univision disapproved of Apple presenting Spanish-language coverage of MLS games.

Canadian television

Coverage of MLS expanded into Canada in 2007 with the addition of Toronto FC. From 2007 to 2010, CBC, Sportsnet, and later

GolTV Canada GolTV was a Canadian English language Category B specialty channel. GolTV was exclusively dedicated to association football (soccer), with live and recorded sporting events from around the world, and news programs. GolTV was owned by Maple Leaf S ...

(owned by team parent company

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. (MLSE) is a professional sports and commercial real estate company based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With assets that include franchises in four of the six major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

), broadcast Toronto FC matches nationwide, and GolTV carried broadcasts of selected regular-season matches not involving Toronto FC.

has held national English-language rights to Major League Soccer in Canada since 2011, and reached a 5-year extension for English-language rights only beginning in the 2017 season. Matches primarily air on the TSN networks, and beginning in 2017, selected matches are simulcast on the terrestrial CTV network. As of the 2017 season,

TVA Sports TVA Sports is a Canadian French-language sports specialty channel owned by the Groupe TVA, a publicly traded subsidiary of Quebecor Media. The channel is a general-interest sports network, and the first major competitor to RDS, the only other ...

holds the national French-language rights to Major League Soccer in Canada. As in the United States, the individual Canadian clubs have also negotiated separate broadcast deals for matches not aired under the Bell Media national contract (although there are no blackouts of these "regional" broadcasts outside of the team's territory). TSN and Sportsnet formerly split coverage of Toronto FC regional matches (their parent companies hold a joint majority stake in MLSE), TVA Sports airs Montreal Impact matches in a separate deal, and TSN broadcasts the Vancouver Whitecaps in a separate deal. In the 2017 season, Sportsnet discontinued its TFC coverage, and its matches moved exclusively to TSN. In the 2018 season,

DAZN DAZN ( "da zone") is a global sports entertainment platform. Different to traditional linear and satellite broadcasting, DAZN is an over-the-top (OTT) streaming service meaning that it is delivered directly to viewers via the internet. The ...

took over rights to out-of-market streaming of matches as part of its overall service, with live and on-demand coverage of all-U.S., matches, and on-demand streaming of matches featuring Canadian clubs 48 hours after their original broadcast. Canadian television rights were included in the global rights deal between MLS and Apple Inc. which will begin with the 2023 season. All games involving Canadian teams will feature French language commentary, in addition to commentary feeds in English and Spanish. The league will simulcast some games on traditional broadcast television networks such as TSN and RDS.

Current broadcasting contracts

Global

United States

Canada

Ratings and viewers

Regular season

Notes: * Although the viewing numbers on ESPN2 declined by 36,000 from 2007 to 2008, ESPN began simulcasting MLS matches on ESPN Deportes in 2008, attracting an average of 40,000 viewers. * Fox Soccer began getting ratings in October 2008. The Fox Soccer numbers for 2008 represent only the last four matches of the season. Viewership numbers prior to October 2008 are unavailable. * FOX OTA- (Over-The-Air) average viewing numbers includes the FOX Deportes Spanish language Simulcast average viewing number for the 2016–2017 seasons. *In 2019 MLS averaged 277,000 viewers for the regular season across ESPN networks per ESPN Press Room Press Release. *In 2020 COVID affected season MLS averaged 257,000 viewers across ESPN networks, viewership average for Fox Sports and Univision networks were unvailable for the 2020 season.

MLS cable viewership average

Notes: * Cable viewership average includes MLS average Television Viewing Audience across the National Broadcast Networks in which matches air. * Numbers do not include streaming viewership.

MLS Cup Finals

Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9) id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8) id:sfondo value:rgb(1,1,1) id:barra value:rgb(0.6,0.7,0.8) ImageSize = width:912 height:380 PlotArea = left:50 bottom:50 top:30 right:30 DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:4 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:1 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:1 start:0 BackgroundColors = canvas:sfondo BarData= bar:1996 text:1996 bar:1997 text:1997 bar:1998 text:1998 bar:1999 text:1999 bar:2000 text:2000 bar:2001 text:2001 bar:2002 text:2002 bar:2003 text:2003 bar:2004 text:2004 bar:2005 text:2005 bar:2006 text:2006 bar:2007 text:2007 bar:2008 text:2008 bar:2009 text:2009 bar:2010 text:2010 bar:2011 text:2011 bar:2012 text:2012 bar:2013 text:2013 bar:2014 text:2014 bar:2015 text:2015 bar:2016 text:2016 bar:2017 text:2017 bar:2018 text:2018 bar:2019 text:2019 bar:2020 text:2020 bar:2021 text:2021 bar:2022 text:2022 PlotData= color:barra width:20 align:left bar:1996 from: 0 till:3.1 bar:1997 from: 0 till:2.6 bar:1998 from: 0 till:2.2 bar:1999 from: 0 till:1.3 bar:2000 from: 0 till:1.2 bar:2001 from: 0 till:2.0 bar:2002 from: 0 till:1.2 bar:2003 from: 0 till:0.9 bar:2004 from: 0 till:1.3 bar:2005 from: 0 till:1.1 bar:2006 from: 0 till:1.2 bar:2007 from: 0 till:1.1 bar:2008 from: 0 till:0.9 bar:2009 from: 0 till:1.1 bar:2010 from: 0 till:0.7 bar:2011 from: 0 till:1.0 bar:2012 from: 0 till:0.8 bar:2013 from: 0 till:1.0 bar:2014 from: 0 till:1.9 bar:2015 from: 0 till:1.2 bar:2016 from: 0 till:2.0 bar:2017 from: 0 till:1.1 bar:2018 from: 0 till:1.8 bar:2019 from: 0 till:1.3 bar:2020 from: 0 till:1.7 bar:2021 from: 0 till:1.5 bar:2022 from: 0 till:2.1 TextData = fontsize:M textcolor:black pos:(300,30) # tabs:(100-left) text:"MLS Cup Average Viewership 1996–present (in millions) 1996–2008 2009–present * The MLS Cup Final has also been aired on Spanish-language networks TeleFutura in 2007 and 2008, Galavision from 2009 to 2011, TeleFutura /

UniMás UniMás (, stylized as ''UNIMÁS'', and originally known as TeleFutura from its launch on January 14, 2002, to January 6, 2013) is an American Spanish free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. The network's programming, which i ...

from 2012 to 2018, and Univision in 2019. The 2020 MLS Cup had 1.677 million viewers. Simulcast audiences were listed as FOX with 1.071 million viewers, UniMas with 459,000 and TUDN with 147,000

Single-game records

Previous national broadcasting networks

, 1996–1999, 2015–2022 *

, 2000–2001 *

Fox Soccer Fox Soccer (formerly Fox Soccer Channel & Fox Sports World before that) was an American television specialty channel specializing in soccer, owned by Fox Corporation, which operated from 1997 to 2013. It formerly broadcast rugby and Australi ...

, 2003–2011 * ABC, 1996–2008, 2019–2022 * HDNet * TeleFutura/

2007–2022 * CBC, 2007–2009 * NBC Sports, 2012–2014 *

, 1996–2022 *

, 1996–2022 * TUDN, 2015–2022 *

, 2017–2022

Previous regional broadcasting networks

MLS broadcasts

* '' MLS ExtraTime'' * '' MLS Game of the Week'' * ''MLS Soccer Saturday'' * ''MLS Soccer Wednesday'' * ''MLS Wrap'' * '' MLS on Apple TV'' * '' MLS Season Pass'' * '' MLS on Fox''

References

{{MLS on Fox ESPN ESPN2 ABC Sports NBC Sports NBCSN The Sports Network CBC Sports Fox Soccer original programming Fox Sports 1 Fox Sports original programming UniMás original programming Univision original programming Wide World of Sports (American TV series) History of sports broadcasting