Michael Wilbon on PTI on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. Credit: PTI
By Sam Neumann on

ESPN has no relationship with Major League Soccer anymore. Michael Wilbon made sure everyone understood that on Friday’s PTI.

To finish off the show, Tony Kornheiser asked his partner about the MLS playoffs. Inter Miami was set to host Nashville SC in the first round, with Lionel Messi and Miami looking to build on their Supporters’ Shield-winning regular season.

The biggest star in soccer history was playing in a playoff game on U.S. soil. MLS had positioned this as one of the league’s marquee moments of the year. And Kornheiser wanted to know if Wilbon would be watching.

The answer was no. Emphatically no.

“I’ve got three TV screens as you know,” Wilbon told Kornheiser. “None of them will have that. I’ll have the World Series large. I’ll have two NBA games flanking. I may click over to your boy wearing pink. I may do that.”

The “boy wearing pink” reference was presumably about Messi, who Inter Miami recently signed to a contract extension that keeps him in South Florida through 2026. But even the biggest star in soccer history apparently isn’t enough to get Wilbon to tune in.

It’s not surprising. ESPN no longer broadcasts MLS games, so there’s no corporate incentive for Wilbon to promote the league on air. Still, the MLS playoffs kicked off Friday night, and one of ESPN’s most prominent voices spent the final moments of PTI making it clear he had zero interest in watching.

MLS and ESPN parted ways after the 2022 season when the league signed a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with Apple TV. The partnership gave Apple exclusive global streaming rights to every MLS match through MLS Season Pass, ending the league’s long relationship with ESPN that dated back to the league’s inception in 1996.

Since then, MLS has become largely invisible on ESPN’s platforms. The network doesn’t show games, doesn’t promote the league, and, judging by Wilbon’s comments, doesn’t watch it either.

The Apple TV deal has been a mixed bag for MLS. On the one hand, every game is now available in one place without blackouts. On the other hand, the league lost the promotional power of ESPN’s airwaves. MLS Season Pass averaged 120,000 viewers per match through the first half of 2025, according to commissioner Don Garber. That’s up 50% from the previous year, but it’s still well below the 343,000 viewers per match that ESPN networks registered in 2022, the final year before the Apple deal began.

Messi’s arrival in 2023 helped spike subscriptions. MLS Season Pass surpassed one million subscribers in July 2023, including free subscriptions for T-Mobile customers and team season ticket holders. But even Messi can’t get Michael Wilbon to put the MLS playoffs on one of his three screens.

To be fair, Wilbon’s comments weren’t mean-spirited. He didn’t trash the league or mock soccer fans. He just stated what’s become obvious: ESPN personalities don’t have a reason to care about MLS anymore. The network doesn’t broadcast the games, so there’s no upside in promoting them. Wilbon would rather watch the World Series and the NBA, two leagues ESPN actually has relationships with.

It’s a reminder of what MLS gave up when it left ESPN for Apple TV. The league got more money and full control over its product. But it also lost the daily visibility that comes with being part of ESPN’s ecosystem. PTI airs every weekday at 5:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. Millions of people watch it. And on Friday, one of the hosts made it clear that MLS no longer registers on his radar.

Inter Miami beat Nashville 3-1 in the playoff opener. Messi scored twice. It was probably a great game. Michael Wilbon wouldn’t know.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann