Major League Soccer’s board of governors has extended the contract of commissioner Don Garber through the end of the 2027 season.
Garber’s previous deal ran through the 2023 season. Garber, who marked 25 years as commissioner in August, continued to work this season as negotiations moved forward on his new deal. Financial terms of the contract have not been disclosed.
Over the last quarter century, Garber, 67, first helped to keep MLS afloat in 2001 by crafting a business plan for a commercial business called Soccer United Marketing, then expanding the league rapidly into new markets while building out infrastructure via billions of dollars of investment in stadiums and training facilities across the country.
MLS teams, in turn, have seen enterprise valuations explode.
“You go to those venues, and that’s a legacy that’s going to live for a long time,” LAFC co-owner Bennett Rosenthal told The Athletic earlier this year. “They’re a testament to what we built here and what Don’s built here. That legacy is not the end of the story. … I think the scale of the legacy grows a lot in the next five to 10 years.”
As MLS has grown, so too has the popularity of soccer in North America. MLS now faces huge competition from leagues globally, including Mexico’s Liga MX and the English Premier League, which rank as the most popular soccer leagues in terms of television viewership in the U.S. MLS is now trying to solidify and grow its place in the shifting landscape of the sport in North America.
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Don Garber: 25 years of the most powerful man in American soccer
Garber is tasked with guiding MLS through this crucial period of time, with global star Lionel Messi playing for Inter Miami, the Club World Cup being played on American soil in 2025 — with two MLS teams in the competition — and then the 2026 World Cup co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
“Our goal is to double our fan base and to do that by the years after the World Cup,” Garber told The Athletic this summer.
“And it’s not going to be any one factor. It’s not going to be just Leo Messi coming into the league. It’s not going to be the next big player who signs. It’s never been about doing it the easy way. I think it’s lazy to think that one player is going to help us deliver on what we want MLS to be over the next three to five years.
“It’s going to be Leo; it’s going to be a new stadium in Miami; it’s going to be a new stadium in New York City that took over 10 years to build; it’s going to be a new team in San Diego with a great young, Mexican national team player; it’s going to be about the expansion of our pyramid with MLS Next Pro and MLS Next and MLS GO. It’s all of these things that, in the next number of years, will have the same impact on our future as the things that we focused on years ago.”
Don Garber presents the Philip F. Anschutz Trophy to Columbus Crew owner Dee Haslam after the 2023 MLS Cup (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Garber’s new contract will run through Dec. 31, 2027, expiring one month before the end of the current collective bargaining agreement between MLS and the MLS Players Association. That negotiation will be seen as another crucial marker in the league’s growth as it looks to adapt and adjust in the global soccer ecosystem.
League stakeholders have been weighing changes to MLS’s competitive structure, including potentially flipping its calendar to a fall-spring model that will align with European leagues, in order to improve the on-field product. A decision on the calendar could come in time for the 2026 season.
MLS owners have now entrusted Garber to see them through these next few years as they consider the league’s next steps.
“Continuity is key,” Nashville SC owner John Ingram told The Athletic this spring. “Father Time is undefeated, right? At some point in time, there (will be) other things for Don to do. But I’m looking forward to at least the next several years of his leadership and I think that it’ll be a real opportunity for us as an ownership group to kind of tee up what comes next.
“We have got to make this Apple deal (MLS’ 10-year, $2.5 billion broadcast agreement) successful and we need to make this World Cup the best ever… It’s our rocket fuel with the world watching and for us to take at least another big step in our journey towards whatever the future will be.
“People ask me what’s the future of MLS and I say I don’t know what the ceiling is, but we’re not near it.”
David Beckham’s arrival at the LA Galaxy was one of the most significant moments of Garber’s tenure (Frazer Harrison / Getty Images)
Whether Garber will remain on beyond this contract is unclear, but he will be 70 years old when the deal expires. After leading the league through two and a half decades of growth, Garber has said several times recently that he sees 2027 as a crucial year to gauge where the league is and where it’s going.
“The World Cup will be fun, it’ll be great, we’ll be involved in it from a business perspective,” Garber said at the recent Leaders Week in London. “But it’s 2027 that matters to me most.”
“There is so much opportunity on the horizon and Don has spent his career sort of helping create this framework and the infrastructure for taking advantage of it,” Seattle Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer told The Athletic earlier this year. “It’s up to all of us now to execute.”
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(Top photo: Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)
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