U.S. soccer is having a moment in the limelight. The first World Cup in North America for 32 years is generating record attendances, TV viewing figures, and revenues. Yet America’s professional soccer league is little esteemed at home and abroad. Blame it on a single counterproductive regulation: a salary cap.
In the last week of June, eight of the ten most-viewed primetime shows were World Cup soccer games. On July 6, 42 million Americans watched the men’s national team lose to Belgium. That may be a smaller audience than for the Super Bowl, but it’s more than for almost any other event—including the World Series, NBA Finals, and the biggest regular season NFL games.
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In recent years, soccer has steadily increased in popularity, partially driven by the growth of the U.S. Hispanic population, from 10 million in 1970 to 68 million in 2024. Overall, 8 percent of American kids aged six to 12 play soccer, behind only basketball (14 percent) and baseball (12 percent).
Already in 2006, a FIFA survey estimated that the U.S. had 25 million soccer players—second only to China, and almost twice as many as Brazil. This owes much to the popularity of the game among women, whose American team ranks second in the world.
Yet U.S. soccer struggles to retain attention between World Cups. Though English Premier League soccer games average 535,000 U.S. viewers, most American soccer fans care little about teams based here. In 2025, Major League Soccer averaged only about 120,000 viewers per game.
This should not be surprising. Neither most fans nor the media are likely to develop a passionate interest in a sports league filled with second-rate players. Only two players from the U.S. men’s national team selected to start against Belgium play for U.S.-based clubs. An ongoing assessment ranks Major League Soccer the nineteenth best league in the world—behind the Polish Ekstraklasa and Paraguay’s Primera Division.
But this disconnect between demand and supply is entirely artificial. Like the NBA and NFL, MLS caps team spending on player salaries. The restriction was originally designed to prevent unsustainable expenditures and to maintain a competitive balance between teams. But it’s failing at both objectives while destroying the quality of play and interest in the league.
None of the world’s top soccer leagues have salary caps. (England’s was abolished in 1961.) That leaves MLS teams unable to compete for the best players. Under MLS rules, each team gets a budget of $6.4 million per year to spend on 20 senior rostered players, none of whose salaries may exceed $803,125. By comparison, the world’s most successful club, Real Madrid, spent $325 million on player wages this past season—including $36 million for Kylian Mbappe alone.
To attract top stars to the league, MLS permits teams to compensate up to three “Designated Players” with funds exempt from the team budget and salary cap. This allowed Inter Miami to recruit the world’s greatest-ever player, Lionel Messi, with a deal worth up to $80 million per year. After signing Messi and other Designated Players, Miami shot up from twenty-seventh place to first in the overall MLS standings.
While this loophole has upset the competitive balance and destroyed expenditure restraint, it has done little to improve the general standard of play. MLS is still considered a mediocre league sprinkled with a few declining stars looking for an easy retirement gig. Top players in their career primes remain insistent on playing in Europe, which makes MLS less interesting to the most passionate U.S. soccer fans, let alone those with a more casual interest in the game.
Eliminating the salary cap would surely cause attendance and broadcast revenues to surge. U.S. crowds exceeding 70,000 for insignificant preseason games between European teams are already common. Competition between world-beating teams with established local bases would surely command enduring attention from fans and U.S. sports media. In turn, a great improvement in the quality of MLS would be a boon to the development of homegrown players.
From the perspective of Europe’s soccer establishment, such a prospect might be alarming. The 2026 World Cup has provided an astonishing demonstration of the U.S. soccer market’s financial muscle, with $3 billion in hospitality and ticket sales dwarfing the $700 million typical of previous tournaments. American investors already own or partially own 12 of the 20 teams in England’s Premier League. If MLS changes its rules to allow U.S. teams to recruit the best players, could soccer’s center of gravity shift here, too?