The USL announced on Wednesday that it is planning to introduce a promotion and relegation format beginning with the 2028 season. The plan calls for a three-tier pyramid, though exactly how the system will work has yet to be determined.
The move marks a notable step for American soccer, where the promotion and relegation debate has gone on for years without a clear sense of how such a setup could function within the country's unique sporting landscape. Major League Soccer remains the top domestic league by viewership and revenue, but it operates as a closed franchise system in which owners effectively buy into the league itself rather than own a club in the traditional sense used by most of the rest of the world.
That franchise model stands in contrast to the club-based systems found elsewhere, even as MLS has worked to emphasize the community support its teams have built over the years. The USL's pyramid plan would sit somewhere between the MLS single-entity structure and the club systems used internationally.
Introducing promotion and relegation means the USL will be competing directly with MLS for attention, fans, sponsors and media deals. The reasoning is that the top five leagues in the world owe their success largely to the scale of investment and revenue behind them, which builds rosters full of top talent, rather than to promotion and relegation itself. For the structure to deliver the benefits often attributed to it, the USL will need to attract the kind of financial resources that back the strongest leagues elsewhere.
MLS itself remains a central factor in how investment and the structure of the American soccer pyramid develop. MLS operates with a salary cap and roster rules that owners use to limit their own spending, which is said to increase competitive equity and profitability for franchise holders, with the league maintaining that owners do not need to invest more into their clubs to improve it overall.
