Should Major League Soccer and Liga MX Just Merge?

Welcome to the Business of Sports newsletter, where this week we look at why the US and Mexican soccer leagues should think about merging, how rugby is doing in the US ahead of its World Cup, and why golf is not American, or Saudi Arabian, but Korean.

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Merge the Leagues

Hi, it’s Vanessa, fresh off a week in Austin where the Major League Soccer All-Star game was played.

The game consisted of MLS stars kicking off against the top players in the Mexican league Liga MX. Unlike other lack-luster all star games, the stadium was packed and loud. The MLS lot won, no thanks to Messi.

While their on-field rivalry is intense, the two leagues operate more like friends with benefits in the front office. They collaborate on the All-Star Game and three other major annual events (the Leagues Cup, Concacaf Champions Cup, and the Campeones Cup) believing in a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ philosophy.

The National Anthem is played prior to the MLS All-Star Game in Austin.

“We have managed to generate kind of a North American league,” Liga MX president Mikel Arriola told Bloomberg while in Austin.

So why isn’t there a North American league? The MLS has three Canadian teams and LigaMX outdraws viewers for the MLS in the US. The countries are all hosting the World Cup together next year, so why not combine the two leagues - perhaps in a two-tier competition, finally bringing the excitement of promotion and relegation to US fans (and back to Mexican supporters).

It would also likely ensure a higher valuation for LigaMX teams, which Arriola noted is one of the biggest benefits from being close partners with the MLS.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber previously dismissed the idea of a merger between the two leagues.

“One of the most positive consequences is that we’re seeing interest from American investors,” Arriola said about the leagues’ close work while also noting that MLS clubs sell for 10x their revenue and, in the last few sales, Mexican clubs have risen to 4x to 5x revenue.

This month we broke the news that Atlas Fútbol Club, a Guadalajara-based team, is being put up for sale by its owners to comply with rules regarding multi-team ownership. And this month fellow Liga MX team Querétaro FC was sold to a group led by Marc Spiegel, founder of Atlanta-based investment firm Innovatio Capital, for more than $120 million.

The Leagues Cup, a regional tournament featuring 18 Liga MX teams and 18 select MLS clubs, begins this week. The top three teams will secure spots in the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup, which both leagues view as a direct route to the FIFA Club World Cup. Previously, each league only had one club advance to the second round of the FIFA Club World Cup.

MLS could do with a ratings boost. The tournament provides additional matches for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV+, a platform for which the MLS commissioner recently released the first public viewership figures during All-Star week. Despite an optimistic league outlook, citing a 50% year-over-year increase to an average of 120,000 unique viewers, this number remains relatively low compared to past broadcast deals.

A significant hurdle to any league merger would be adapting the Apple TV deal for a larger league. This would likely alienate Mexican fans who typically lack access to the streaming app. A person close to the situation informed Bloomberg that the All-Star game is not well received in Mexico due to its inaccessibility.

That said, watching games in Mexico presents its own challenge, due to each team’s individual media rights agreements, forcing fans to subscribe to multiple platforms to access desired matches.

Alex Freeman crosses the ball in front of Sebastián Cáceres as Kevin Mier stands in goal during the MLS All-Star Game in Austin.

With any sports media problem, there’s a bunch of investors waiting to try and fix it. In 2021, private equity giant Apollo started the process of investing $1 billion into the league with a plan to centralize the media rights, but the deal still hasn’t closed.

“The deal is still on the table and the order of things has changed,” said Arriola. “Our owners said let’s evolve our corporate governance. So now we are in the process of building new corporate governance and also negotiating this centralization.”

Arriola spoke as if he believes the deal is all but a certainty. However, a potential reason for owners resisting a centralization deal is that three major owners also operate media channels that broadcast their clubs’ matches. This would directly impact their revenue.

With the World Cup coming to the US, Mexico, and Canada next year, it’s an opportune moment to strengthen the relationship between the two leagues. However, political considerations – both at a league and country level – might pose a challenge.

ICYMI

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Apparently it might be ok to cheat at golf.

USA Rugby Gets Ilona Maher Boost

Hi, it’s Chris. Abby Eineman had never been to a professional rugby match before. But a recent event sponsored by a local team to try out the game piqued her interest, and a chance to watch USA star Ilona Maher in person was too good to pass up.

Ilona Maher of USA warms up during the Pacific Four Series match between the New Zealand Black Ferns and USA at North Harbour Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.

“I think we all follow Ilona Maher on TikTok and Instagram so that got me interested,” Eineman said at Washington DC’s Audi Field, where she and a group of friends had come to see a doubleheader featuring the USA Women’s and Men’s teams. “I loved her Olympics content and then she went on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Hilarious.”

The 28-year-old federal worker was one of 15,198 people in attendance for the USA Women’s recent match against Fiji on July 19, a new record for a women’s national game in the US and surpassing the previous record of 10,518 set just in May at a match versus Canada in Kansas City.

That’s an early but significant milestone as rugby organizers start to ramp up preparations before the US hosts the men’s World Cup in 2031 and the women’s in 2033. Americans’ awareness of rugby ranks low compared with that of the major US sports, and organizers are keen to grow the sport’s US fan base by hosting special matches such as the Women’s-Men’s doubleheader in DC and a high-profile clash between Ireland and New Zealand in the autumn.

And adding to the evidence of the growing appeal of the women’s game, US partner CBS chose to televise the women’s match on a national broadcast, while it showed the men’s game against England on its cable network CBS Sports Network.

Maher expects the crowds to continue to grow.

“I thought the crowd was awesome and we get behind it and can feel the energy. I love seeing that, I think they’re going to come out more and experience it more,” Maher said after her team’s 31-24 victory.

It helps to have Maher, a Paris Olympics bronze medalist in Rugby Sevens, as an ambassador for the sport. The 28-year-old Vermont native is rugby’s biggest global star on social media where her message of body positivity has resonated with her millions of followers. “Strong is beautiful, strong is powerful,” she said in her acceptance speech as she won the 2025 Best Breakthrough Athlete award at the ESPYS just days before the USA-Fiji match.

Beyond the upcoming Women’s World Cup in England, rugby organizers see the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics as another big opportunity to win new fans through Maher and the women’s team.

“We think the US have got an opportunity of being back on the podium in ’28,” said World Rugby Chief Executive Officer Alan Gilpin. “If the US women can be successful at LA28, what that does for the brand of rugby in this country is really meaningful.”

Still, organizers are aware that much work needs to be done to win over fans in a crowded market dominated by major sports like the National Football League and National Basketball Association, and are drawing up plans to grow the sport in the US through investment and hosting more international matches.

Gilpin said World Rugby would invest $270 million under a growth markets development plan, which is focused on the US but will include some other markets, to grow audiences and promote community rugby in the ramp-up to the US World Cups.

He added that bringing five to six matches a year to the US featuring top national sides, like the Ireland-New Zealand match scheduled for October in Chicago, would be key to building audience engagement.

World Rugby is considering hosting friendlies as well as matches from existing competitions and has had discussions about bringing the Six Nations, the Rugby Championship and Australia-New Zealand’s Bledisloe Cup matches to the US, Gilpin said.

Meanwhile, organizers have been busy visiting more than 30 potential host cities to gather information and check out possible venues ahead of the applicant phase that opens later this year.

Organizers expect to use around 13 to 15 venues, more than at other World Cups, because of the complexity of integrating schedules with existing tenants in the NFL and Major League Soccer. They expect to have several venues locked in around the end 2026 and the beginning of 2027 prior to the men’s World Cup in Australia.

Overall, World Rugby’s goal is to develop a US market not just for the success of the tournaments but one that will last for the long term.

“For us, this is all about building the game, building audiences here in the US towards what we know are going to be spectacular Rugby World Cups and creating that legacy, that beyond 2031 and 2033 will allow the game to thrive here,” Gilpin said.

The Real Home of Golf

Hey, it’s Giles. Last week, we looked at the hot mess that is the cycling industry, and we received some interesting and nostalgic mail from readers about how much they enjoy hitting the road, and why cycling infrastructure in the US sucks (which should be its own newsletter).

So, perhaps it makes sense this week to look at the original form of cycling; golf.

Obviously I’m alluding to the worn trope that both sports are over-indexed to middle-aged men with disposable income. It’s a theme that’s got its own Reddit thread (of course it does).

Golf is its own hot mess. We’ve spoken a lot about how Saudi Arabia has attempted its own, expensive, ongoing bid for golf. And about the PGA’s attempt to keep hold of a sport that it sees as part of the American psyche.

But maybe in a decade’s time golf isn’t going to be owned by Americans or the Middle East. It’s going to belong to Asia, with South Korea at its epicenter. The country is totally golf-mad. It has the world’s highest number of golf simulators per capita and a booming amateur scene. The obsession is also more equally balanced. Korean women have dominated the LPGA for over a decade, and male golfers are rising fast on the PGA Tour.

TaylorMade Golf Co. bags, some bearing the name of Centroid Investment Partners founder Jinhyeok Jang, in Seoul, South Korea.

But more importantly, instead of battling over the soul of golf, Korean investors and Asian conglomerates have long been buying up the stuff you use to actually play it.

Titleist is majority owned by Acushnet Holdings, which is listed on NYSE and majority owned by Misto Holdings Corp, a Korean sports conglomerate. TaylorMade has been owned by a Korean private equity firm for a few years. Both Mizuno and Srixon/Cleveland Golf are owned by Japanese firms. Of the big players left, Topgolf Callaway Brands is listed in the US (and going through a restructuring), PING is owned by the Solheim family based in Arizona, and Cobra Golf is owned by Germany’s Puma.

Even golf grip manufacturers have been bought up by Korean investors. Daol Private Equity bought grip maker SuperStroke in 2022 and rival Lamkin last year – two of the biggest suppliers.

Such is the passion for golf in Korea that they don’t want big name assets to leave. Which brings us back to TaylorMade.

This week we wrote about how TaylorMade, the golf equipment giant whose clubs are used by top pros like Scottie Scheffler, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy, is currently embroiled in an ownership dispute between two South Korean companies.

Known for producing drivers, irons, and putters, TaylorMade holds an estimated 15% to 20% of the global golf equipment market. Centroid Investment Partners, a mid-sized private equity firm that bought TaylorMade in 2021 for $1.7 billion, now wants to sell it.

But F&F Co., a fashion group that helped finance the deal, is not so keen. A representative for F&F stated to Bloomberg News that the financing agreement crucially grants F&F preferential bidding rights.

Both Centroid and F&F have armed up with bankers (and presumably lawyers, especially given F&F is threatening to sue). Our reporters in Seoul write that, for a Korean firm, owning a global golf brand is as much about national pride as business strategy.

More golfing assets will be up for grabs. Topgolf Callaway is currently spinning out the Topgolf part of its business, and is also open to selling the business. The spinout was supposed to happen in the second half of 2025, but the boss of Topgolf just jumped ship. There have also been attempts to get a consortium together to buy out Topgolf, according to people familiar with the situation.

Last year, there were rumors that a Korean strategic investor considered a bid for Callaway Topgolf – something Callaway eventually denied. Still, no smoke and all that.

Does it matter who owns golf manufacturing companies? Perhaps not. But there’s more incentive for TaylorMade to invest capital closer to home. It was bought by Centroid in May 2021, a few months later it bought Korean golf ball manufacturer, Nassau Golf Co. Ltd, and revamped the Korean factory in 2024. The previous two locations for its factories were South Carolina and Taiwan.

Perhaps in the short term there’s nothing to it. The big US players will keep getting the big name sponsors. But after a decade or two, with more investment in Asian players, development centers, and the local tour, things could look a lot different, all from who owns the clubs.

Merge the Leagues

ICYMI

USA Rugby Gets Ilona Maher Boost

The Real Home of Golf

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