Major League Soccer sets season-wide attendance record

Per-game attendance has stabilized across the league, too. An average of 23,240 fans attended each MLS match in 2024 while headlining clashes like Kansas City versus Miami and LAFC versus the LA Galaxy drew more than 70,000 spectators apiece.

It's tempting to credit Lionel Messi for this jump; his arrival created a wave of interest in MLS and he featured in several of the best-attended matches of the 2024 season. But the "Messi effect" is just a small part of the story.

Messi's 2023 MLS debut was preceded by sweeping changes across the MLS media landscape. The league signed a 10-year deal with Apple that standardized league coverage across all geographies. Gone are the days of spotty, hyper-local coverage; Apple and MLS ensure that all teams receive consistent, professional airtime throughout the season on MLS Season Pass.

Before the Apple deal, MLS coverage was heavily influenced by local conflicts, and teams would see their kickoff times switched around due to events outside their control. A team like the Columbus Crew, for instance, could kick off at 12:30 p.m. on one Saturday and 1:45 p.m. the next, and the lack of predictability kept casual fans away on game days.
In this post-Apple world, however, everything is standardized and consistent. Games kick off in predetermined time slots and rarely get pushed for other events.

The Apple deal is the true hero behind MLS's growth. Without it, MLS wouldn't be able to set these attendance records ... and it wouldn't have been able to sign Messi, either, because his MLS salary includes a profit-sharing agreement with Apple's MLS Season Pass product.

MLS has gone from strength to strength in recent years, and this new season-wide attendance record of 11 million fans is proof. (It's not far off the NFL's regular-season attendance record of 18.9 million.) But for all of the noise surrounding on-field deals like Lionel Messi's, it's the off-field ones that helped the league soar.