#88 How does MLS expansion work, and what comes next for the league?
Soccer 101
TSS
4.9 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode, with the MLS season kicking off this weekend, Graham and Taylor take a long look at the league's expansion history. What did they get wrong early and how they turned it around, what factors have been most important when determining potential new markets, and what the future looks like for the league AKA does more expansion necessitate promotion and relegation?
Today's episode is brought to you by... ExpressVPN! Get an extra 3 months of service for free at ExpressVPN.com/soccer
The Soccer 101 theme, and plenty of other excellent music, can be found right here: https://aerialist.bandcamp.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to soccer 101. |
| 0:18.0 | My name is Taylor Rockwell, and today it won't just be me on the mic. It's time for expansion. |
| 0:23.4 | Graham Ruffin has paid his $325 million fee to join this podcast, Graham. I know it was a lot to ask. |
| 0:29.5 | I promise it will probably maybe be worth it down the road. Thank you for being here. |
| 0:33.8 | Thank you, Taylor. I mean, I presume you're okay with that being paid in crypto. That's |
| 0:38.2 | okay with you, right? Yeah. It's just an ETF of your smiling face. That's what I want. |
| 0:43.9 | How many mortgages did you have to take out, or did you just have a cool several hundred |
| 0:47.9 | million dollars lying around? Yeah, just lying around. Just lying around. Not using it at the |
| 0:52.0 | moment. Yeah. No, what happened was I did give you |
| 0:54.6 | $325 million worth of crypto, but by the time it actually reached you, it was worth like $3. Yeah, it was a bummer. It was a bummer how that went. But you still get to be on the podcast. We're expanding. We're going to incorporate you. And maybe less so Major League Soccer. I don't know if they would accept crypto. |
| 0:51.9 | Maybe one day they will. |
| 0:53.3 | But we are taking a look at expansion |
| 0:55.1 | in Major League Soccer. |
| 0:56.3 | How did the league get to where it is? What makes a good expansion market? What comes next? We're going to get into all of that. I want to start with expansion itself, because that is something that I think for Americans is more common. You see it all the time in sports, very all the time when it comes to Major League Soccer. |
| 1:29.0 | Less so with some of the other leagues, but you still get it. |
| 1:31.2 | Graham, for you, how odd is the expansion concept? |
| 1:36.1 | I mean, to me, it's not odd just because I do follow it like American soccer and have written about MLS. |
| 1:40.8 | But to someone in Europe who doesn't do that, then yeah, it is odd. |
| 1:45.8 | It's literally not a conversation we ever have in Scotland or in England. |
| 1:51.0 | There are obviously discussions about should we restructure the league. |
| 1:54.8 | Like Scotland's top flight is 12 teams at the moment. |
| 1:57.3 | We do talk about whether it would be better as a 16 team league, but that's not, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TSS, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of TSS and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.