MLS Cup delivers strong audience for Messi’s win despite college football competition

Despite airing head-to-head against the Big 12 and SEC Championship games, the MLS Cup turned in a strong audience on Saturday.

The league announced on Friday that this year’s MLS Cup between Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami and Thomas Müller’s Vancouver Whitecaps attracted a global audience of 4.6 million viewers, which MLS is characterizing as “record viewership.” Of the 4.6 million that tuned in to watch Messi’s club take home the MLS Cup, 3.6 million watched via Apple TV or the league’s international linear distribution partners (including TSN in Canada). Fox and Fox Deportes, which broadcast the game to a linear audience in the United States, averaged 994,000 viewers, more than double last year’s linear audience for LA Galaxy-NY Red Bulls (468,000 viewers).

Of note, Fox’s number could later be revised upward due to a Nielsen issue. The Fox measurement also includes Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology and expanded out-of-home viewing, both of which generally serve to increase viewership for live sports versus prior years.

Saturday proved to be a much-needed turnaround for the league after last year’s poor showing. Informed speculation pegged the Apple TV audience for MLS Cup at fewer than 100,000 last season. This year, the streaming audience was orders of magnitude larger.

There are a few reasons this could be the case. Obviously, the Messi factor cannot be ignored. He’s the most popular player in the world, and he was competing for his first MLS Cup. That alone will draw some eyeballs. Vancouver’s involvement also likely drove the Canadian audience higher than usual.

But MLS made a couple of shrewd moves towards the end of the season to ensure its postseason was getting a wider distribution. For one, the league moved its entire playoffs in front of the Season Pass paywall, making all matches available to anyone with an Apple TV subscription. That helped build momentum towards Saturday’s final match. And two, MLS shifted the match window up a little bit to avoid direct competition with the SEC title game, instead only overlapping during the first half.

Luckily for MLS and its fans, the viewing experience should only get easier in upcoming years. Beginning next season, MLS is dropping the Season Pass requirement entirely, with all matches available for anyone with an Apple TV subscription. And beginning in the 2027-28 season, MLS will shift its schedule to put its postseason in the spring, absent of any football competition. Both changes should help put the league in front of more viewers.

It’s difficult to suss out exactly how MLS Cup compares to other top soccer competitions in the United States, like the NWSL Championship, because the Apple TV audience figure is global. But at least from a linear perspective, last month’s NWSL Championship edged out the MLS Cup audience on Fox, averaging 1.18 million viewers on CBS. The NWSL did face much weaker football competition, however.

Nevertheless, Saturday capped off a much-needed momentum swing for MLS after a 2024 season marred in negativity about its Apple deal. Viewership and interest in the league are back trending in the right direction. MLS certainly hopes that its radical changes in the next few years will help continue that upwards trajectory.