Don Garber's 25-year run at the top of Major League Soccer is ending. Larry Berg, co-owner of Los Angeles Football Club, has been named the next MLS Commissioner, with the transition set for next year. Garber isn't disappearing entirely — he stays on in an emeritus role through the end of his contract in 2027 — but Berg will be the one making the calls.
Berg will have to sell his LAFC stake before taking the job, which is standard practice. Before co-owning the club, he spent years as a senior partner at Apollo Global Management. Running a private equity firm and running a sports league aren't the same animal, but understanding capital, leverage, and long-term asset value? That translates.
What Berg is actually walking into
The easy narrative is that Berg inherits a thriving league. The harder truth is he inherits two negotiations that could define MLS's next decade.
First: a new collective bargaining agreement with MLS players. The current deal expires at the end of January 2028, and player wages and roster rules have been a friction point for years. The players' union won't be rolling over.
Second — and arguably bigger — media rights. The current Apple TV deal runs through the 2028-2029 season. Whatever comes next will be a referendum on how much MLS has genuinely grown versus how much of its recent momentum was Apple's distribution doing the heavy lifting. Those numbers will shape the league's financial ceiling for years.
Garber deserves credit for what he built. When he took over in 1999, MLS was a league fighting for survival. By the time he leaves, seven MLS clubs rank among the 30 most valuable football franchises on the planet, according to CNBC's 2026 Global Soccer Team Valuations — led by Inter Miami at $1.6 billion. That's not a vanity metric. That's institutional credibility.
Berg's opening hand
The league Berg is inheriting looks strong on paper. Expansion has been aggressive, star power is real, and MLS franchises are now being discussed in the same breath as established European clubs when it comes to valuation. Any MLS title odds or futures markets will be shaped significantly by how stable the league's structure looks under new leadership — labor unrest or a messy media deal would shift the competitive and commercial picture fast.
Berg hasn't said a word publicly yet. The real measure of his tenure starts the moment he sits down across from the players' union.
